

?ErER C. YORKE 



: \ 




Glass _iiX12X0 

Book JL_ 

Copyright )^° 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 



THE GHOSTS 
OF BIGOTRY 



SIXJ.ECXURES BY 

REV. pi^cr^ORKE, D. D. 



Second Edition 



SAN FRAiN CISCO: 

THE TEXT BOOK PUBLISHING CO. 

641 STEVENSON STREET 

1913 



■> 



% 






Imprimatur 

)£ PATBITIUS G. EIOEDAN, D. D. 

Archiepiscopus Sti. Francisci 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1913 

By P. C. YOEKE 
In the office of Librarian of Congress. Washington, D. C. 



APR 27 1914 



/. 



©CI.A371579 



.1 



i^ 



CONTENTS. 



Lecture Page 

I. —Ghosts in General .... 7 
II. — The Gunpowder Plot ... 55 

III.— The Popish Plot 120 

IV.— The Gordon Riots . . . .169 
V. — The Ecclesiastical Titles 

Bill 219 

VI.— Anti - Catholic Movements 

in North America . . .271 



PREFACE. 



«5 



THE following lectures are an at- 
tempt to give in popular form the 
main features of the treatment meted 
out to the Catholic Church in England 
and America by English Protestantism. 
They were written after a four years' cam- 
paign against the A. P. A. in California 
had ended in the break-up and disappear- 
ance of that organization. The Catholic 
Truth Society of San Francisco published 
them in pamphlet form under the title 
^^Ghosts." The plates, however, were de- 
stroyed in the fire of 1906, and, as there 
have been many calls for them since that 
time, they are now reprinted in a more 
permanent form. Experience showed that 
the original title did not sufficiently indi- 
cate their scope, so they are renamed ^'The 
Ghosts of Bigotry." 

Oakland, CaL 
St Matthew's Day, IQI2. 



THE GHOSTS OF 
BIGOTRY 

I.-GHOSTS IN GENERAL. 

WITH this series of lectures we 
inaugurate the work of a Catholic 
Truth Society. A Catholic Truth 
Society is an organized effort to spread the 
truth concerning the Catholic Church, 
both among Catholics and non-Catholics. 
It is in religion what in politics is called 
"a campaign of education." We Catholics 
believe we have the truth. We believe we 
have those teachings which God deemed 
best for the instruction of mankind. We 
believe we have those doctrines, to teach 
which He sent His only Son from heaven. 
We believe, therefore, we possess that truth 
which is necessary for humanity and is 
able to satisfy all the needs of humanity. 
If our belief is real, we must wish to 
spread this truth. If we love our kind, if 



The Preaching Office of the Church. 

we wish them well, if we would give them 
comfort, hope, peace, we must bum with 
the desire to tell them the good tidings 
which alone can satisfy their souls. 

For this purpose was the Church estab- 
lished, and with the commission, ^Treach 
the Gospel to every creature," she has gone 
up and down the world. This is not the 
place to speak of her unceasing and mani- 
fold activity. She preaches from her pul- 
pits Sunday after Sunday. Her churches, 
day by day, are silent invitations to the 
passers-by to lift up their hearts. She 
preaches in her works of charity and benef- 
icence. She preaches in the lives of her 
members, the lives of the thousands of sim- 
ple and lowly God-fearing men and 
women who bear her name; in the lives 
of her sisters and priests who stand fearless 
before the plague or the yellow fever and 
go down to death rather than permit a 
single soul to appear before its Maker 
without the healing of the Sacraments and 
the strength of the Body of Christ. 

In those ways, and in a thousand others, 

8 



Her Methods Change With the Times. 

the Church is ever preaching the Gospel. 
Since her Founder's death there is no age 
which has not rung with her deeds ; there 
is no land which has not been full of her 
labors. You may ask, therefore, What is 
the need of this new crusade? What is the 
need of this organized effort to spread 
Catholic truth? Are not the ancient ways 
sufficient? Why should we train our feet 
to new paths? 

Our answer is: Our crusade is no 
new venture, but that it is an ancient 
method adapted to modern needs. This 
world of ours is like the great ocean— 
ever in a state of change. The changes 
themselves, it is true, are few, but they 
are ever returning one on the heels of 
the other. The tides of this month are 
like the tides of last month. The storm of 
a week ago is like the storms of years gone 
by. Wave is like unto wave, and calm is 
indistinguishable from calm. Yet wave 
and tide, calm and storm create the un- 
ceasing change that makes the ocean the 
image of instability. 



The Message Is Always the Same. 

It is even so among men. There is 
nothing new under the sun, said the wise 
man, and what has been, the same shall be. 
Political changes, commercial changes, 
changes of opinion, in manners, in dress, 
all have a small orbit and are constantly 
returning. But amidst all those changes 
the word of God stands unchanged and un- 
changeable. The Church which has the 
commission of preaching remains unmoved 
amidst the vicissitudes of times and things. 
In that she shows most like to God. Thou 
in the beginning, O Lord, didst found the 
earth, and the heavens are the work of Thy 
hands. They shall perish but Thou shalt 
continue; and they shall all grow old as 
a garment, and as a vesture shalt Thou 
change them and they shall be changed. 
But Thou art the self same and Thy years 
shall not fail. 

But though the unchanging word which 
the unchanging Church preaches to the 
world is always and at all times one, the 
manner in which it is presented to the 
ever-changing peoples must be manifold. 

10 



She Preaches One Way in Catholic Lands. 

The Church must meet man on his own 
level and speak to him in a language which 
his heart can understand. If he will not 
listen to the truth when presented to him 
in one way, the Church must cast about 
until she finds a way which will be accept- 
able. Her methods, therefore, will differ 
from time to time and from country to 
country. In Catholic lands, and among 
Catholic peoples, the solemn round of 
praise and sacrifice by which her year is 
sanctified is a perpetual instruction for her 
children. They grow up in a Catholic 
atmosphere, and, unconsciously, as they 
learn their mother tongue they learn their 
mother religion. The pictured saints that 
look down upon them from window and 
niche and wall in their churches become 
their teachers, and the practices of private 
and public life knit into their bones the 
faith of their fathers. 

It is otherwise in countries which are 
not Catholic. There everything tends to 
draw them away from the Church, and to 
obscure her teaching. Hence she cannot 

II 



She Uses Other Means With Non-Catholics. 

rest content with what we may call the 
dead weight of public opinion, for public 
opinion is against her; she cannot rest 
content with the mere internal force of 
Catholic life, because Catholic life is 
chilled and weakened in an uncongenial 
clime. Therefore, she must return to her 
ancient methods, when the world was all 
before her, a harvest yet unreaped. She 
must return to the constant and uninter- 
rupted proclamation of her mission. She 
must become again a prophet crying in the 
wilderness, ^Trepare ye the way of the 
Lord." She must become again a witness 
going out to all the people, and giving tes- 
timony to the truth as revealed by Christ 
Jesus. 

Such is the condition of the Church in 
this country. We are growing great in 
everything which makes for material 
power; but we are growing weak in every- 
thing v/hich makes for moral power. If 
I should say that the American people is 
an irreligious people I should be circulat- 
ing a calumny. If I should say that the 

12 



She Must Preach to the American People. 

American people is rapidly becoming a 
churchless and creedless people I should 
be saying what all admit. How long a 
churchless and a creedless people can re- 
main at heart a religious or a moral people 
is another question. Suffice it to say, that 
history records no example of a lasting 
case. Either truth or superstition, in some 
form, must prevail. If Moses remains too 
long on the mountain the people will make 
them the golden calf. 

Catholics believe that they have the 
whole truth which Christ revealed. They 
believe that the American people needs 
this truth, for, as Archbishop Spalding 
used to say, ^^A great nation needs a great 
religion." The question, therefore, which 
confronts us is. How is the American 
people to be reached? We have special 
facilities in our favor, we have special dif- 
ficulties to overcome. To take advantage 
of- those facilities, to provide against those 
difficulties, is the Church's task. The sit- 
uation is novel; it is not new. Like the 
prudent householder, she has in her store 

13 



She Must Reach Them By the Old Methods. 

new things and old. She is now where 
she was in the third century — face to face 
with a mighty civilization which was 
hungry for God, and yet distrusted the 
messenger of God. 

In those days the Church relied on the 
preaching of the Word of Truth. She had 
then, as now, the same Sacrifice, the same 
Sacraments, but she hid them away from 
the gaze of the pagans. She jealously ex- 
cluded the unbaptized from her churches, 
for her rites were the bread that the chil- 
dren of the household alone might share. 
But if the unbeliever might not come to 
her, she went to the unbeliever. She 
preached to him of God and of the Christ 
and of the necessity of a revelation. 

The same must be our plan now. For 
all practical purposes we might as well 
have in force the ancient rule which al- 
lowed none but Catholics to enter our 
churches during divine service. How few 
they are who come from among our sepa- 
rated brethren to see for themselves and 
to hear what we have to say, only those 

14 



Because We Have Again the Old Conditions. 

know who, Sunday after Sunday, look on 
the same familiar faces in the pews. 
Therefore, if they do not come to us we 
must go to them. If the truth of God is 
worth anything, it is at least worth this 
trouble from those who value it. 

Such is the first reason for* a Catholic 
Truth Society. The world has changed, 
but the change is only a return of old con- 
ditions. The means which were successful 
in the first spring shall be successful in the 
second spring. The Church is the same, 
the truth is the same — only the methods of 
presenting that truth are altered with the 
times. 

Perhaps one of the most salient features 
of the organized effort to spread Catholic 
truth, known as the Catholic Truth So- 
ciety, is that it is an organization of the 
laity. In Catholic theology the task of 
preaching the Gospel was laid upon the 
Apostles, and by the Apostles given to their 
successors. St. Paul sums up the teaching 
of the Church in the pertinent queries, 
^'How shall they call on Him in whom 

15 



The Mission of the Catholic Laity. 

they have not believed? Or, how shall they 
believe in Him of whom they have not 
heard? And how shall they hear without 
a preacher? And how shall they preach 
unless they be sent?" Therefore, the Bish- 
ops, as the successors of the Apostles, in 
their own -dioceses, and the Pope, as the 
successor of the chief of the Apostles, in 
the whole world, are the divinely ordained 
preachers of the Gospel, .and they commit 
that charge to those whom they judge fit. 
But this oversight does not mean that there 
is not on each of us the obligation of 
making our religion known. It means 
that we are not to set up altar against altar, 
and that all things should be done in 
seemly fashion and with one mind. Hence 
on the laity, too, rests the duty of giving 
a reason for the faith that is in them. And 
when the laity are organized, as in this 
Catholic Truth Society, by the Archbishop 
of the diocese, who, and who alone, is re- 
sponsible for the teaching of the faith pure 
and undefiled, there is no break with the 



i6 



Their Opportunities of Spreading the Truth. 

traditions of the Church, nothing opposed 
to Catholic habits of thought. 

As I have said, our times have their 
own advantages and their own draw- 
backs. It is to make use of one of those 
advantages that the Catholic Truth So- 
ciety organized the Catholic laity. In 
this country men of all creeds meet on 
the common basis of their citizenship. 
In the ordinary walks of life Catholic 
and non-Catholic are thrown into close 
contact. They discuss every question in 
the heavens above, in the earth beneath and 
in the waters under the earth. Not the 
least infrequent of those discussions is on 
the subject of religion. Non-Catholics 
who would not think of entering a Cath- 
olic church or of speaking to a Catholic 
priest will eagerly question the Catholic 
laity concerning the teaching and practices 
of the Catholic Church. Such an oppor- 
tunity should not be lost. If any one 
should know about the Catholic Church 
surely Catholics should. It is not good 
taste to force religious subjects into a 

17 



How Newman Wished the Laity to Act. 

conversation, but it is not good policy to 
be silent when your Church is under dis- 
cussion. Nearly fifty years ago, in a time 
of great excitement in England on the sub- 
ject of the Catholic Church, John Henry 
Newman wrote words which are true of 
Catholics, especially in these times and in 
our own country. He said: 

There is a time for silence, and a 
time to speak; the time for speaking 
is come. What I desiderate in Cath- 
olics is the gift of bringing out what 
their religion is; it is one of those 
^^better gifts" of which the Apostle 
bids you be ^^zealous." You must not 
hide your talent in a napkin, or your 
light under a bushel. I want a laity 
not arrogant, not rash in speech, not 
disputatious, but men who know their 
religion, who enter into it, who know 
just where they stand; who know 
what they hold and what they do not, 
who know their creed so well that 
they can give an account of it, who 
know so much of history that they can 
defend it. I want an intelligent, well- 
instructed laity; I am not denying that 

i8 



The Laity the Measure of Catholic Spirit. 

you are such already, but I mean to 
be severe, and, as some say, exorbi- 
tant in my demands; I wish you to 
enlarge your knowledge, to cultivate 
your reason, to get an insight into the 
relation of truth to truth, to learn to 
view things as they are, to understand 
how faith and reason stand to each 
other, what are the bases and prin- 
ciples of Catholicism, and where lie 
the main inconsistencies and absurd- 
ities of the Protestant theory. I have 
no apprehension you will be the worse 
Catholics for familiarity with these 
subjects, provided you cherish a vivid 
sense of God above and keep in mind 
that you have souls to be saved. In all 
times the laity have been the measure 
of the Catholic spirit — they saved the 
Irish Church three centuries ago, and 
they betrayed the Church in England. 
Our rulers were true — our people were 
cowards. You ought to be able to 
bring out what you feel and what you 
mean as well as to feel and mean it; 
to expose to the comprehension of 
others the fictions and fallacies of your 
opponents, and to explain the charges 
brought against the Church, to the sat- 

19 - 



His Lesson on the Need of Self-Reliance. 

isfaction, not, indeed, of bigots, but of 
men of sense of whatever cast of 
opinion. And one immediate efifect of 
your being able to do all this will be 
your gaining the proper confidence in 
self, which is so necessary for you. 
You will then not have the temptation 
to rely on others, to court political 
parties or particular men; they will 
rather have to court you. You will 
no longer be dispirited or irritated (if 
such is at present the case) at finding 
difficulties in your way, of being called 
names, in not being believed, in being 
treated with injustice. You will fall 
back upon yourselves; you will be 
calm, you will be patient. Ignorance 
is the root of all littleness ; he who can 
realize the law of moral conflicts, and 
the incoherence of falsehood, and the 
issue of perplexities, and the presence 
of the Judge, becomes, from the very 
necessity of the case, philosophical, 
long-sufifering and magnanimous. — 
^^ Present Position of Catholics in Eng- 
land/' Led. IX, No. 4. 

The Catholic Truth Society cannot 
create such a laity, but it can organize it 

20 



The Mission of the Printing Press. 

and encourage it. Then, there is a second 
advantage, as great in its way, if not 
greater. The American people reads. 
Perhaps its reading is not deep, but it is 
wide; moreover, it is impartial. The peo- 
ple will read anything that is readable, no 
matter what it treats about. Every fad, 
every humbug, every political measure, 
every social dream has its expounders, 
has its readers — why not the old Church 
that gave printing to the world? We 
hardly realize what a powerful engine the 
printing press is. The Church has never 
despised it; from the beginning she em- 
ployed it. She employs it now, but in our 
country not enough. To help in some 
way to spread Catholic Truth among the 
people by means of Catholic literature, 
this, too, is the end of the Catholic Truth 
Society. 

Such are some of the advantages which 
will favor the work of the Catholic 
Truth Society. There are, however, dis- 
advantages against which we must strive — 



21 



Americans Ready to Hear All Claims* 

and this brings me to the subject proper 
of this lecture, ^^Ghosts in General." 

When the prophet of a new political 
measure comes before the people, men 
are willing to take him for what he is 
and discuss his arguments for what they are 
worth. They are willing to examine the 
case as he sets it forth and, although they 
may not agree with him, they give the 
measure a fair hearing and accept or reject 
it on its merits. They extend this courtesy 
to every one who comes before them and 
claims to have something worth talking 
about. A new medicine or a new ma- 
chine, a discovery in morals or a discovery 
in religion— all claim an attentive audi- 
ence, and they get what they claim. But 
there is one society which comes before 
American non-Catholics and appeals to 
them in vain. The Catholic Church is in the 
midst of them-^a fact too potent to be de- 
nied, an energy too strong to be ignored. 
She makes lofty claims to their attention. 
In a world of clashing and conflicting sects 
she declares that she holds the truth once 

22 



Except Those Put Forth By the Church. 

delivered to the saints. To those who are 
tossed about by every wind of doctrine she 
offers the shelter and security of the Rock 
of Peter. To those who are perplexed with 
the riddle of existence she holds out the 
key that unlocks all mysteries. In an age 
of doubt she stands for faith. In a land 
given up, above all lands, to things ma- 
terial, she is the witness of the Unseen. 
Closer and closer her children throng 
round her. Deeper and deeper, day by 
day, grows their devotion to her. As 
she walks through the land, glorious ca- 
thedrals, great churches, schools, colleges 
and universities, hospitals and asylums 
spring up where her feet have trod. And 
all this comes to pass not from State aid 
but from, the munificence of the poor. The 
ages of faith are renewed and the widow's 
cruse of oil is not diminished. 

Yet, in spite of all her claims, of all her 
offers, of all her deeds, she cannot obtain 
a hearing from the non-Catholic body of 
American citizens. Any other society can 
be put on trial and can be assured of a fair 

23 



Because to Some She Is a Dead Issue. 

verdict — her case is already judged. Even 
those who claim to be tolerant and 
broad-minded, and have convinced them- 
selves that they are tolerant and broad- 
minded, put her aside with a contemptuous 
shrug. ^^Catholicity is a dead issue," they 
say, ^^a worn-out superstition. Civilization 
has tried the Church and found her want- 
ing. She may have had her uses among 
the barbarians of a thousand years ago, 
or among the barbarians of to-day, but we 
have outgrown her tutelage. What mes- 
sage can she have for this age? None. 
Impossible! Absurd!" And they close 
their ears lest they may hear, and they 
turn to the betterment of the condition of 
decayed dogs, or to a scientific examination 
of mediumistic slate writing, or to the 
Buddhists or to the Theosophists, or to any 
clue, no matter how faint, that promises 
to lead them to spiritual truth, and they 
refuse to hear her voice who alone has 
the tidings of salvation. 

There are others who, when they hear 
her claims, shudder at the very name. "Is 

24 



To Others She Is the Mystery of Iniquity. 

she not Antichrist? Is she not the mystery 
of iniquity? Is she not the scarlet woman 
drunk with the blood of the saints? To 
listen to her would bring a curse upon us 
and ours. She is like that heathen Circe 
whose voice steals away the senses of men. 
Let us therefore stop our ears lest we be 
destroyed. We have seen the fate of this 
one and that one who dallied with the 
temptation and fell into her snares. 
They left the brightness and liberty of 
Protestantism, and went into the dark- 
ness and slavery of Rome. They were be- 
witched. No man in his sane senses could 
have done it. Therefore they are insane. 
Let us keep away from her. Let us never 
look upon her face. Let us never listen to 
her voice. She is an accursed thing, even 
as our fathers told us, and our only safety 
is to fly when she draws near." 

There are others who hear her chal- 
lenge and answer it back boldly. ^We 
know you of old," they say, ^^friend of ty- 
rants and enemy of the people. History 
tells how you have always been on the side 

25 



To Others She Is the Ancient Enemy. 

of wrong, never on the side of right. Here 
in this free republic, by some mysterious 
chicanery, you have gathered around you 
the ignorant and the vicious. You have 
only one purpose. You would destroy our 
liberties, overturn our schools, and erect on 
the ruins of the capitol the throne of your 
Pope. We have no need to listen to you 
or to examine )^our claims. The report of 
you has come down to us from our fathers 
who went out of you and were saved. 
Your blighting influence is on every land. 
Compare Spain with England, compare 
Portugal vv^ith Germany, compare Mexico 
with these United States. Here your aim 
is to bring back the darkness of the Middle 
Ages. Therefore, by trickery and fraud 
you have got possession of all the political 
offices; you have your Jesuits in the Cab- 
inet; your secret societies are armed and 
drilling, you are only waiting for the op- 
portune moment to crush out Protestantism 
and Liberty together. Listen to you! Hear 
your case! Let there be no truce with 



26 



Newman Paints the Prejudiced Man.. 

treason. Let there be no compromise with 
dishonor." 

If, by any chance, the case of the Cath- 
olic Church is set forth in public, and they 
cannot help but listen, think you that they 
lay aside their prejudice? Newman de- 
scribed the state of affairs in 1851. His 
description is true of 1897. You, your- 
selves are acquainted with the facts. Judge 
then the accuracy of the description : 

However, we will suppose the prej- 
udiced man in a specially good humor, 
when you set about undeceiving him 
on some point on which he misstates 
the Catholic faith. He is determined 
to be candor and fairness itself and to 
do full justice to your argument. So 
you begin with your explanation : You 
assure him he misconceives your doc- 
trines; he has got a wrong view of 
facts. You appeal to original authori- 
ties, and show him how shamefully 
they have been misquoted; you appeal 
to history, and prove it has been 
garbled. Nothing is wanted to your 
representation; it is triumphant. He 
is silent for' a moment, then he begins 

27 



The General Anti-Catholic Temper. 

with a sentiment, ^ What clever fellows 
these Catholic are!" he says, ^'I defy 
you to catch them tripping; they have 
a way out of everything. I thought 
we had you, but I fairly own I am 
beaten. This is how the Jesuits get 
on; always educated, subtle, well up 
in their books — a Protestant has no 
chance with them." You see, you have 
not advanced a step in convincing him. 

So, while the meanest and poorest have 
the right to come before the bar of pub- 
lic opinion and demand a fair hearing, 
the greatest Church in the world, the 
Mother Church of Christendom, no 
sooner appears in judgment than the 
voices are raised, "Away with her! 
Crucify her! Crucify her!" That I 
am not exaggerating, your own experi- 
ence bears witness. I do not mean to 
classify the whole non-Catholic world 
under the head of the vulgar ranters who 
a few years ago disgraced the name of 
Protestant. But I do mean that all have 
that temper of mind which renders them 
averse to examining the claims of Cath- 

28 



Stimulated By Old and New Charges. 

olicity. With the illiterate, the calumnies 
that we sell for money permission to com- 
mit sin; that we are idolators; that priests 
are all bad and nuns all wicked; that mur- 
der and adultery and lying are favorite 
pastimes of ours; that we are guilty of 
fraud in our dealings with the people, and 
that we grow fat on the credulity of the 
ignorant — with the illiterate, I say, these 
calumnies take, and stand in the place of 
argument. With others, the charges that 
the priests are in politics, that we have 
designs on the school fund, that we put 
none but Catholics into office, are sufficient. 
With others, the belief that history tells 
how we were bloodthirsty and cruel in the 
past, and how we would be bloodthirsty 
and cruel now if we had the power, is both 
law and Gospel. With still others, the con- 
viction that we are a survival of the un- 
fittest, that we are an anomaly in the nine- 
teenth century, that enlightenment must 
slay us — makes them indifferent to our rea- 
soning. And so on — for a thousand argu- 
ments or one — through every walk of life, 

29 



The Haunted House and Its Ghosts. 

through every class of society, but the re- 
sult is the same. Ignore the Church if you 
can, fight her if you dare, speak well of 
her if you must, but never, under any cir- 
cumstance, permit yourself to believe that 
she may be^ true and that her claims are 
worthy of examination by men of sense. 

Have you ever heard of a haunted 
house? perhaps you have seen one. No- 
body can tell what it is that distinguishes 
it from other deserted houses, yet even 
under the broad daylight it has an air of 
mystery and peculiar desolation. The win- 
dows are broken, grass is growing in the 
walks, the paint is peeling off the wood- 
work, the walls are discolored with mold, 
the trees about grow wild and into 
strange and fantastic shapes. Rumor runs 
that unearthly noises have been heard at 
the dead hour of night — shrieks and the 
clanking of chains. When friends are 
gathered round the fire, when jest and 
laughter follow fast, you may tell the story 
of the haunted house, and meet with incre- 
dulity ; but pass it in the night alone, when 

30 



But No Ghost Can Outlast the Dawn. 

the trees nod and beckon in the wind, 
when the broken windows rattle in their 
frames, when the boards creak — no one 
knows why — and the bats whizz in and out 
of the deserted rooms — and there are few 
who will not at least whistle to keep up 
their courage. Why they are afraid none 
can tell. Why the house should be haunted 
there is no authentic reason. No one ever 
came nearer to the Ghost than the man 
whose brother-in-law's wife's grandfather 
was related to the man that saw the man 
that saw the Ghost. Yet the house is 
haunted; every one says so; every one is 
right. Have naught to do v/ith it. 

Terrible, however, as Ghosts may be in 
the witching hours of night, when grave- 
yards yawn, not one of them can bear the 
light of day. As soon as the dawn is grey 
in the sky the most pertinacious must flit 
away. Says the melancholy Dane: 

I have heard, 
The cock, that is the trumpet to the 
morn, 



31 



The Ghosts of Anti-Catholic Bigotry. 

Doth with his lofty and shrill sound- 
ing throat 

Awake the god of day; and, at hi§ 
warning, 

Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air, 

The extravagant and erring spirit hies 
to his confine. 

You may see now why I have entitled 
this lecture "Ghosts in General." To 
those who do not belong to her commun- 
ion, the Catholic Church is like some 
haunted house. Dark and bloody deeds 
are done within its walls. Strange cowled 
figures, known as inquisitors, stretch the 
Protestant upon the rack and then give 
his tortured limbs to the tenderer mercies 
of the faggot and the stake. Popes, Jesuits, 
monks, cardinals, nuns, stalk through its 
rooms; shrieks and groans are mingled 
with unholy revelry and blasphemy against 
the Most High. The pious Protestant 
stops his ears and flies from the accursed 
spot. But when the sun rises all these ghosts 
hie them away. If the terrors of his mid- 
night experience will permit him he may 

32 



Newman Describes the Flitting of the Ghosts. 

now examine the house from garret to cel- 
lar. But unfortunately he will not. He 
knows enough about the house — catch him 
going there again! If he did, as Newman 
says: 

The spectres of tyranny, hypocrisy 
and fraud would flit away with the 
morning light. There would be no 
more dread of being burned alive by 
Papists, or of the gutters overflowing 
with Protestant blood. Dungeons, 
racks, pulleys and quicklime would be 
like the leavings of a yesterday's revel. 
Nor would the political aims and plots 
and intrigues, so readily imputed to 
us, seem more substantial, and though 
I suppose there is lying and littleness 
and over-reaching and rivalry to be 
found among us as among other sons 
of Adam, yet the notion that we mo- 
nopolized these vile qualities or had 
more than our share of them would 
be an exploded superstition. This, in- 
deed, would be a short and easy way 
not of making Protestants Catholics 
but of reversing their ridiculous 
dreams about us — I mean if they 
actually saw what they so interminably 
argue about. 

33 



The Origin of the Anti-Catholic Ghosts. 

The question naturally arises, Whence 
those Ghosts? Some Ghosts, you know, 
arise by a kind of spontaneous generation. 
They come into being on the principle of 
giving a dog a bad name. Let a house be 
shut up, let it be untenanted for a long 
time, let rats hold high revelry in it, and 
soon the Ghosts appear. Other Ghosts are 
the creations of mischievous boys or of 
evil, designing men. But they all have this 
quality: you must keep away from them if 
you would believe in them. Once let the 
clear light of truth shine upon them and 
they vanish into air. 

This is the object of this series of lec- 
tures — to study the origin of the anti-Cath- 
olic Ghosts. We shall see that some of 
them are the creation of evil men for evil 
purposes. We shall see that some of them 
are the spontaneous productions of disor- 
dered imaginations and hereditary igno- 
rance. We shall first study the general 
sources whence these delusions spring, and 
we shall take up, one by one, some of the 
great historic Ghosts, bring them into the 

34 



The Master's Promise of Persecution. 

white light of truth, and, as they vanish 
away in accordance with the law of their 
nature, we may discover the hidden 
springs, the wires, the ropes, the pulleys 
that made them seem so lifelike and so 
terrible when they stalked abroad among 
a credulous generation. 

The history of human credulity is not 
pleasant reading. We agree readily 
enough with the exclamation of the fairy, 
^What fools these mortals be!" But when 
we examine the long catalogue of fooleries, 
and read how often and how grossly and 
how multifariously men have made fools 
of themselves we begin to be ashamed of 
our human nature. But in dealing with 
the Christian religion men have surpassed 
all records on all other subjects. The 
Founder of that religion warned His dis- 
ciples that such was to be their fate: 
^^Blessed are ye when men shall hate you 
and revile you and persecute you and say 
all manner of evil against you falsely for 
My sake. Rejoice and be glad, for your 
reward is very great in heaven." In His 

35 



The Pagan Calumnies About Christians. 

own person that same Divine Founder suf- 
fered the evils which He foretold. He 
was accused of disloyalty, He was ac- 
cused of stirring up sedition, He was 
accused of plotting the overthrow of the 
institutions of His country. Hardly had 
His religion begun to take form than these 
and other calumnies were hurled at it. 
When Nero, the Roman emperor, was ac- 
cused of burning Rome he was able to 
divert suspicion from himself by laying 
the crime at the door of the Christians. 
Nothing was too wild, too revolting to be 
believed about them. For three hundred 
years they were held up to the patri- 
otic Romans as enemies of the gods and 
enemies of their country. It was said that 
they were consumed with a deadly hatred 
of all mankind, that they fled the light, 
that they carried out their rites in caverns. 
They were accused by learned and sober 
writers of feasting on human flesh. Some 
inkling of the doctrine of the Real Pres- 
ence in the Eucharist had reached the pa- 
gan mind, and such was the interpretation 

.^6 



The Protestant Calumnies About Catholics. 

put Upon it. A young child, it was said, 
was brought into the Christian assemblies. 
It w^as covered with flour and then stabbed 
to death with a knife. The Christians 
drank its blood and ate its flesh. Such a 
calumny may seem to you too absurd for 
credence, yet it was believed. And, strange 
to say, it has survived through all those 
centuries, so little does human nature 
change. It is still common enough among 
anti-Catholic lecturers of the baser sort 
who are continually harping on the babies' 
bones found in convent cellars and convent 
sewers. But it is one and the same old 
Ghost that stirred the Romans to frenzy 
and made the amphitheatre ring with the 
cry, ^The Christians to the lions!''* 

It is a peculiar characteristic of those 
Ghosts, that not only are they Ghosts but 
they are dirty Ghosts. In the old Roman 
times it was charged by the Pagans that 
the Christian assemblies were scenes of de- 
bauchery and of crimes that are not named 
without a shudder. The very same calum- 
nies are uttered against the Church to-day 

37 



A Witness to the Continuity of the Church. 

— were uttered from this platform and 
against you who have lived your lives in 
this town. 

As the Catholic Church is the Church of 
Christ, as she is the Church of the Cata- 
combs and of the Martyrs, it is not sur- 
prising that this continuity of calumny 
should bear witness to the continuity of her 
existence. If she has the inheritance of the 
disciples' glory she must have the inherit- 
ance of the disciples' trials. For this if 
for no other reason we should expect that 
the great institution founded by Him who 
was set for a sign to be spoken against 
should be gainsaid. But there are special 
reasons why the Catholic Church should 
be spoken against by our non-Catholic 
brethren in this country, and why they 
should have a breed of Ghosts all their 
own to people the haunted house. 

The population of this land is made up 
of men from every race and country. The 
earlier colonists, however, came from the 
British Islands, and they have impressed 
their language and their laws upon the 

38 



The Religion of the Colonists English. 

whole nation. Only one of the original 
colonies was in the beginning Catholic, 
and, as you know, the presecuted Protes- 
tants who found a refuge from intolerance 
in Maryland turned on their hosts and pro- 
scribed the Catholic faith within its bor- 
ders. Before the War of Independence 
the thirteen colonies were practically 
Protestant. Their Protestantism was not 
all of the same variety, but the varieties 
agreed in one thing, that immediately or 
mediately they came from England. The 
Puritans and Cavaliers were English born, 
the Presbyterians were either from Scot- 
land or the north of Ireland. The re- 
ligion, therefore, of the colonists, like their 
language, was English. 

Leaving out the Lutherans, the main 
stream of American Protestantism de- 
scends from this source. By American 
Protestantism I mean not only the sects 
like the Congregationalists, Unitarians, 
Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, and so 
on, but the far more numerous body of 
non-Catholics who march under no eccle- 

39 



How Protestantism Came Into England. 

siastical banner but agree in this, that 
they are not Catholics. American Protes- 
tantism, therefore, has two heirlooms — the 
English language and the English tradition 
about the Catholic Church. 

Up to the reign of Henry VIII England 
had been a Catholic country. That mon- 
arch threw off the supremacy of the Pope 
because the Pope refused him a divorce. 
In his reign and in the reign of his son 
the process of de-Catholicizing England 
went on. It was checked for a while under 
Mary, but was renewed under Elizabeth 
and completed under James. The process 
therefore lasted for over a hundred years. 
Though it was accelerated by massacres, 
by murder, by the stake, the rack and the 
gibbet, by fine, imprisonment, confiscation 
and banishment, it was still a slow process. 
It is not easy to rob a people of the faith 
which their fathers before them had 
professed for nearly a thousand years. 

We often wonder when we read the his- 
tory of those times how it was done. The 
common Protestant theory is that there was 

40 



By Base Methods and Baser Men. 

a great awakening of the human mind and 
that the benighted Catholics saw the light 
of the Gospel for the first time and flocked 
around it. We know that the common 
Protestant theory is wrong. The move- 
ment from beginning to end was a polit- 
ical movement. In the reign of Henry 
VIII it was directed against the Pope be- 
cause the Pope would not pander to 
Henry's lust. In no other article of faith 
would he allow dissent, and he burned the 
poor Lutheran who denied the Real Pres- 
ence in the Blessed Sacrament as cheer- 
fully as he beheaded his Lord Chancellor 
who denied the royal headship of the 
Church. In Mary's time the Parliament 
acknowledged the supremacy of the Pope; 
in Elizabeth's time the Parliament repu- 
diated it. Macaulay's words concerning 
the persons who introduced the Reforma- 
tion into England are severe, yet Macaulay 
was a Protestant of the Protestants: 

A king whose character may be best 
described by saying that he was des- 
potism itself personified, unprincipled 

41 



In the Long Run Protestantism Triumphed. 

ministers, a rapacious aristocracy, a 
servile Parliament, such were the in- 
struments by which England was de- 
livered from the yoke of Rome. The 
work which had been begun by, 
Henry, the murderer of his wives, was 
continued by Somerset, the murderer 
of his brother, and completed by Eliz- 
abeth, the murderer of her guest. . . 
Of those who had any important share 
in bringing the Reformation about, 
Ridley was perhaps the only person 
who did not consider it as a mere 
political job. — Essay on Hallam. 

But the Protestant movement in England, 
such as it was, was a success. It was the 
religion of the court, and therefore became 
a passport to royal favor and political pre- 
ferment. It became the synonym for all 
that was cultured, for all that was 
powerful. It was no advantage to the 
Catholics to protest that they, too, were 
loyal, to muster in thousands around their 
queen when the Armada threatened Eng- 
land. The Protestant party determined 
that they were to be disloyal, and as dis- 

42 



Catholics Stigmatized as Traitors and Fools. 

loyal they were branded by act of Parlia- 
ment, by popular rumor, by the tradition of 
literature. It was of no avail for learned 
men to write in the defense of the old 
Church — their books were burned by the 
common hangman, and they, too, if the 
powers that were got their hands on them, 
suffered the fate of their books. It was of 
no avail to speak of the services of the 
ancient religion; the ancient religion was 
declared to be a thing of mummeries 
and superstitions, and straightway, in the 
mouths of courtiers, in the mouths of the 
leaders of fashion, a thing of mummeries 
and superstitions it became. It was of no 
avail to point to the fact that the bulk of 
the people clung to the ancient faith; what 
were the people without leaders? There- 
fore, take their leaders, banish some be- 
yond the seas, clap others into prison and 
chop their heads off as traitors, and, be- 
hold, the people, like sheep without a shep- 
herd, are scattered on every hill. So it 
was in England — the politicians decreed 
that the old religion should go, and go it 

43 



Persecution Made the New Religion Secure. 

did. They called its professors ignorant, 
and ignorant they became. They called 
its defenders disloyal, and disloyal they 
were. Let Papist be a name of re- 
proach; let Mary, the Catholic, be 
'^Bloody Mary;" let Elizabeth, the Prot- 
estant, be ^^Good Queen Bess;" let Jesuit- 
ical mean dishonorable and tricky; let 
monk stand for bigot; let Catholic be an- 
other name for superstitious and reaction- 
ary, and let the great Church which civil- 
ized the world be the mother of abomina- 
tions. As it was decreed, so it was done. 
Those politicians did their work well. 
They made England a Protestant country 
by making Protestant a word of blessing 
and Catholic a word of reproach. The 
tradition which they founded was handed 
down from father to son. If a chance 
Catholic should protest — for two centuries 
and a half — the laws took care that his pro- 
test should not be heard. Now that he can 
be heard, the dead weight of the tradition 
continues the work of the penal laws. 
Therefore it is that the Catholic Church 



44 



The English Tradition Imported to America. 

is refused the hearing which our Ameri- 
can people give to every other system. 
The traditions of England were carried 
over to this land, and here they grew 
and thrived. The necessities of our 
war for Independence made us toler- 
ant, but the old leaven was still in the 
new lump. Catholics were few and far 
between. The old prejudice was propa- 
gated in Sunday school and in public 
school, in the pulpit, in the history, in the 
novel, in conversation, in the manners of 
the people. Catholicism was something 
outlandish, strange, suspicious, disloyal. 
That Catholics had horns and that their 
priests had cloven hoofs was an article of 
faith in some localities; in all localities 
Catholicism was an evil to be dreaded, a 
superstition to be set aside as unworthy 
of the contemplation of serious men. 

So the tradition continued even to our 
own day. The increasing numbers of Cath- 
olics may have modified its virulence in 
some respects ; in others the growth of the 
Church has intensified it. While English 

45 



Long Quarrel Between Ireland and England. 

speaking Protestantism in this country is of 
English descent immediately or mediately, 
the earliest and the main stream of English 
speaking Catholicism had its origin in Ire- 
land. Now between England and Ireland 
the quarrel of centuries has left hard and 
bitter feelings. In the end England proved 
the luckier and she ground the sister island 
beneath her heel. She ravaged the land 
from end to end. She drove out the lead- 
ers of the people. She strove for a hun- 
dred years to force her new religion upon 
them, she made a nation that, if left 
alone, would be considered prosperous and 
learned, ^^the most distressful country that 
ever yet was seen." 

When men act with one another in the 
way England acted with Ireland, they 
must give some reason to themselves and 
others for their action. So England ex- 
plained to the world why it was necessary 
to plunder Ireland so often and to harry 
her people and to reduce her periodically 
to starvation. Of course, the explanation 
must not hurt England. All the fault 

46 



The English Tradition About Ireland. 

must be laid at the doors of the mere 
Irishry. They were little more than sav- 
ages, treacherous, cruel, dishonest, given 
to shooting the virtuous English from be- 
hind hedges, and, under all circumstances, 
^^agin the government." They were un- 
fitted for self-rule — watch their eter- 
nal squabbling, though their squabbling 
is but mild compared to that in which 
the politicians of other lands indulge. 
They are lazy and improvident. It is true 
we have deliberately killed their manufac- 
tures and permitted landlordism . to rob 
them of their earnings twice a year — still, 
what can you do with people who live in 
thatched cabins and burn turf? Then 
their priests own them. They are the de- 
graded servants of the hierarchy. If they 
would only turn Protestant, we should be 
inclined to pity them; but the best we can 
do for Papists is to exterminate them; 
send them, by the sword of Cromwell in 
one century, to hell or to Connacht; send 
them, by the bitter famine in another cen- 
tury, to the workhouse or to America. 

47 



The Great Irish Migration to the States. 

This was the story England told the 
world, and the English colonists carried 
it to this new land. The Irishman was 
some kind of an inferior creature born to 
be the hewer of wood and the drawer of 
water to the Anglo-Saxon. He was some- 
thing half man and half monkey; some- 
times amusing, always contemptible. Then 
he worshipped the Pope, paid to have his 
sins forgiven, hated the Bible and there- 
fore could neither read nor write, but was 
in all things degraded and to be despised. 

Hence, when in the first half of the 
century the great Irish immigration set 
towards these shores we had so many 
outbreaks of anti-Catholic fanaticism. 
The old Ghosts came up out of their 
graves and went up and down the dark 
places of the land. Lodges were founded, 
meetings were held, oaths were sworn to 
protect the country from the Pope, the 
Devil and the Irish. 

You see, then, that two of England's 
traditions, the tradition about the Catholic 
and the tradition about the Irish, met in 

48 



The New Ghosts of Bigotry in America. 

this country to form a very obnoxious and 
terrible Ghost. It is true that where the 
new comers were brought in close contact 
with the old residents of the land the 
Ghost was speedily laid. Personal friend- 
ships, business connections, intermarriage, 
conversions, all tended to exorcise the 
evil spirit. But it would be untrue to say 
that it does not still exist. The tradition 
still runs at times in a subterranean cur- 
rent, but given a favorable opportunity it 
comes to the surface and sweeps thousands 
with it. 

You, yourselves, can judge if I speak 
the truth. If any one should say that the 
Episcopalians or the Baptists or the Meth- 
odists were storing arms in the basement 
of their churches, and were getting ready 
to massacre all who did not believe with 
them, no one would credit it. Say that 
the Catholic churches are arsenals and 
that the Catholics are preparing to mur- 
der Protestants, and the story is believed. 
No authority is asked for this truth; no 
authority is given. No one thinks of ex- 

49 



The Preponderance of Irish Office Holders. 

amining the churches to find out for him- 
self. The tale is in complete accord with 
the Protestant tradition. It agrees with 
what Protestants were told in their youth; 
with what they read in their histories. The 
Catholics were always cruel, always blood- 
thirsty. The Ethiopian does not change 
his skin or the leopard his spots. 

Again, if any one should say that Pres- 
byterians have all the political offices 
worth having, no one would believe it. 
At least there would be some examination 
of the records; some search for facts. 
But say the Catholics hold all the offices, 
and then rattle off a list of Irish names 
as proof of your assertion, and the fiction 
is swallowed. Men will not take the 
trouble to find out what is the proportion 
of Catholic office holders to non-Catholic 
office holders, or the proportion of the 
Catholic population to the non-Catholic 
population. No; they believe at once 
that the Pope's Irish have captured the 
works. They have always heard that the 
Bishops and priests and Jesuits were cun- 

50 



Protestant and Catholic Countries Compared* 

ning fellows, and that the Catholics have 
by such cunning been foisted into public 
offices, is all of a piece with their infor- 
mation. 

Let any platform speaker get up and 
characterize all Catholic countries as ig- 
norant and unprogressive; no one is sur- 
prised. It is just what they expected. Let 
any magazine writer stigmatize the Mid- 
dle Ages as bloody and intolerant — every 
one remembers the adjectives he uses as 
old familiar friends — is it not so written 
in our school histories? Let a Catholic 
protest against such histories, and straight- 
way he has designs on our public schools. 
Let him attempt to correct the popular 
notions about his fathers in the faith, and 
he is asked does he think he can throw 
dust in the eyes of the enlightened Ameri- 
can public at this end of the nineteenth 
century? 

But you can supply illustrations from 
your own experience far better than I. 
These are the Ghosts which we must send 
flitting back to the shades from which 

51 



The Real Meaning of Catholic Truth. 

they emerged, by the cold, white light of 
truth. This is the work of a Catholic 
Truth Society. And on the very thresh- 
old we shall meet one of those suspicious 
spectres. Why a Catholic Truth Society? 
Why Catholic Truth? Truth has no re- 
ligion. Protestant Truth is as good as 
Catholic Truth. What, then, must this 
Catholic Truth be but a wicked perver- 
sion of history to deceive us into surren- 
dering our glorious heritage of the Bible? 
We shall not quarrel about a word. Truth 
is of no religion. Catholic Truth means 
only the truth about Catholics. We care 
not from what source it comes; truth is 
as welcome from the Protestant as from 
the Catholic. All we want is the truth, 
and all we want is that our non-Catholic 
brethren should examine what we have to 
say. We do not expect to make them all 
Catholics by our crusade. That work be- 
longs solely to Him who holds in His 
hands the hearts of men and sweetly dis- 
poses all things as He wills. We have 
but one object, and that is to bring men 

52 



We Ask Only Fair Play and No Favor. 

to see realities, not Ghosts. We wish 
them to see with their eyes, and to hear 
with their ears, and to handle with their 
hands, and to say if we are the traitors, 
the sots, the scoundrels, the ignoramuses, 
that the great Protestant tradition repre- 
sents us to be. We ask them to give the 
Catholic Church the American privilege 
of fair play and to hear the side of the 
accused before passing judgment. This 
is not an unreasonable request, and should 
not be denied us. And it shall not. False- 
•hood has had its day, and mayhap a long 
day, but its longest day must have an end. 
.No lie is eternal. Sooner or later the 
truth must prevail. To have some share 
in securing the triumph of truth is the 
aim of a Catholic Truth Society. The 
signs of the times are clear that the tri- 
umph cannot be long delayed. The 
Church is free. She is not compelled to 
hide in catacombs or in garrets. She 
walks in the midst of men, and, though 
her enemies may cast dirt at her and 
slander her and gnash their teeth at her, 

S3 



We Are Confident of the Triumph of Truth. 

they cannot deceive men forever. Man's 
heart was made for truth. The scales of 
the tradition shall some day fall from the 
eyes of our brethren, and then shall they see 
the beauty of the Church of God even as 
the prophet saw her when her feet were 
fresh on the hills of eternity. ^Who is she 
that Cometh forth as the morning rising, 
fair as the moon, beautiful as the sun, 
terrible as an army set in battle array?" 



54 



II -THE GUNPOWDER PLOT. 

IN July, of 1775, George Washing- 
ton took command of the American 
troops before Boston. Though they 
had shown their mettle at Bunker Hill, 
they were still raw levies and sadly in 
need of military discipline. To inculcate 
discipline, to procure supplies and to 
guide the military operations over a vast 
extent of territory, was the task Wash- 
ington set himself to accomplish in the 
second half of the year 1775. He suc- 
ceeded, and his success meant independ- 
ence. 

One of his general orders dealing with 
discipline has an interest for Catholics. In 
New England the 5th of November was 
known as ^Tope's day." A figure repre- 
senting the Pope was carried through the 
streets in mock procession and burned. In 
1775, when November came round, the 
New England soldiers before Boston were 

55 



George Washington and Pope's Day. 

preparing for the usual celebration. Wash- 
ington heard of it and issued an order, in 
which he said: 

As the Commander-in-chief has 
been apprised of a design formed for 
the observance of that ridiculous and 
childish custom of burning the effigy 
of the Pope, he cannot help express- 
ing his surprise that there should be 
officers and soldiers in this army so 
devoid of common sense as not to 
see the impropriety of such a step. 
It is so monstrous as not to be suffered 
or excused; indeed, instead of offering 
the most remote insult, it is our duty 
to address public thanks to our Cath- 
olic brethren, as to them we are in- 
debted for every late success over the 
common enemy in Canada. 

By those words was laid forever one 
of the most terrible and bloodthirsty 
Ghosts of the great Protestant tradition. It 
was an English Ghost, which had been 
brought over by the Puritans to these 
shores. It was a Ghost which had been 



';6 



An English Ghost Brought by Puritans. 

evoked by English political needs to di- 
vide the English people and to rivet on 
their necks a tyranny, the most abject 
known in history. It was a Ghost which 
made intolerance possible, and secured, 
at least for a time, the triumph of 
the ^^divine right of kings to govern 
wrong." It was but fitting that a new 
nation, which had grown tired of kings, 
and was destined to become an exem- 
plar of religious liberty to all peoples, 
should at the very beginning of its strug- 
gle for freedom put to flight forever that 
obnoxious spectre. And it is among the 
proudest boasts of Catholics that a libel 
on their loyalty was so early in our his- 
tory refuted forever by one who knew 
how to fit noble words to noble actions — 
George Washington. 

The day known in New England as 
Pope's day is known in Old England as 
Guy Fawkes' day. When we say a man 
^^dresses like a guy," or when we speak 
of ^^guying" a person, in the sense of mak- 
ing him ridiculous, we are paying tribute 

57 



Guy Fawkes and the Church of England. 

to Guy Fawkes and the effigy which was 
solemnly burned on the 5th of November. 
In the Established Church of England 
the day was a holiday, and was marked 
on the Calendar of the Book of Common 
Prayer as the ^Tapists' Conspiracy." The 
Anglican clergy were commanded to give 
warning to the people on the Sunday be- 
fore ^^for the due observance of said day." 
For the feast ^^a special form of prayer 
with thanksgiving" was provided. The 
wording of the petitions offered to Al- 
mighty God w^as fearful and wonderful. 
It was stated in them that the King, the 
royal family, the nobility, clergy and 
commons were, ^^by Popish treachery, ap- 
pointed as sheep to the slaughter, in a 
most barbarous and savage manner be- 
yond the examples of former ages." They 
also contain many pleasant and comfort- 
able expressions about *Topish tyranny," 
^^the secret contrivance and hellish malice 
of Popish conspirators," "cruel and blood- 
thirsty Papists," "enemies that delight in 
blood," and much more to the same effect, 

58 



A Holiday to Demolish the Pope. 

very edifying to the pious Protestant wor- 
shipper and very conducive to tolerant 
and charitable feelings toward his Catho- 
lic brother. In order that nothing might 
be lost of the meaning of this service a 
sermon was preached, in which Rome's 
Red Hand was held up to public execra- 
tion. Of course, in the Anglican Church, 
as among our own preachers, there were 
some who had the Pope for breakfast, 
dinner and supper; but, as among us, they 
were not very numerous or of much influ- 
ence. But on the 5th of November every 
clergyman, moderate and extreme, broad 
and narrow, high and low, tolerant and in- 
tolerant, good, bad and indifferent, got 
into his pulpit and demolished Popery 
with all its works and pomps. In the 
evening there were popular sports and 
an effigy known as Guy Fawkes was pa- 
raded through the streets and burned with 
every circumstance of righteous disap- 
proval. To be sure, the small boy was 
the chief beneficiary of such proceedings. 
The firecracker habit, which we associate 

59 



Because Protestantism Had Been Saved. 

with the Fourth of July, was by young 
Britons associated with the 5th of No- 
vember. Naturally, the small boy had not 
the slightest idea of what it was all about. 
It was not at all clear in his mind whether 
Guy Fawkes was the Pope or the devil; 
but the common opinion was that he was 
a Papist of some kind, and the difference 
between the devil and a Papist was en- 
tirely too small to notice. 

When the small boy grew up and was 
able to understand sermons, he learned 
that the celebration was a solemn national 
thanksgiving for a great deliverance. The 
liberties of England and the pure faith 
of Protestantism had been miraculously 
preserved from the Papists, who, as the 
prayer had it, ^^turn religion into rebellion 
and faith into faction." He would be told 
that those Papists were wicked and blood- 
thirsty, and were consumed with a deadly 
hate of Protestants in general and of Brit- 
ish Protestants in particular. In fact, 
many years ago they conspired to blow up 
the King, lords and commons with gun- 

60 



From Hellish Machinations of Papists. 

powder. In this conspiracy they were all 
concerned, from the Pope down to the 
peasant. Moreover, there was neither 
rhyme nor reason for their attempt. They 
had received no provocation, but were 
driven to the bloody design through ^^pure 
cussedness." Besides, in doing so they 
were only acting according to the princi- 
ples of their religion, which tells them 
that it is no sin to murder a heretic. In- 
deed, in the eyes of Catholics it is a most 
meritorious act to overthrow a Protestant 
government simply because it is Protes- 
tant. The attempt failed because God had 
the King of England in His especial keep- 
ing. Therefore, all loyal Protestants ob- 
serve the day as a day of thanksgiving. 
In the morning the parsons blow up the 
Pope in the pulpit, and in the evening the 
small boys blow up Guy Fawkes in the 
market place to the inspiring and patriotic 
refrain: 

Remember, remember 
The Fifth of November. 



6i 



The Common Account of Gunpowder Plot. 

If we turn now to the text books of 
history in common use among us, we shall 
find the following account of the trans- 
action which made the 5th of November 
memorable. For instance, let us take the 
paragraph devoted to the subject in that 
notoriously sectarian book, ^^Myers' His- 
tory," which, in contravention of the law^s 
of California, is used in so many of our 
public schools: 

The Gunpowder Plot (1605). — I^ 
the third year of James' reign was 
unearthed one of the most fiendish 
plots imaginable. This was nothing 
less than a plot to blow up with gun- 
powder the Parliament building, upon 
the opening day of the session, when 
King, lords and commons would 
all be present, and thus destroy at a 
singrle blow everv branch of the Eng- 
lish government. This conspiracy, 
known as the Gunpowder Plot, was 
entered into by some Roman Catho- 
lics, because they were disappointed 
in the course which the king had 
taken as regards their religion. The 

62 



As Given in Ordinary School Histories. 

leader of the conspiracy was Guy 
Fawkes. Thirty-six barrels of gun- 
powder were secreted in the cellars 
beneath the chamber occupied by the 
lords, and then the conspirators quietly 
awaited the assembling of Parliament. 
The timely discovery of the plot was 
brought about by means of a letter of 
warning from one of the conspirators 
to a Catholic lord (his brother-in- 
law), begging him to absent himself 
from the opening of Parliament. 
^'God and man," ran the mysterious 
message, ^^have concurred to punish 
the wickedness of this time; . . . 
for, though there be no appearance of 
any stir, yet, I say, they will receive 
a terrible blow this Parliament, and 
yet they shall not see who hurts 
them." The closing lines of the letter 
awakened a suspicion as to the nature 
of the plot; the vaults beneath the 
Parliament House were searched, and 
the terrible secret was discovered. 
Fawkes, who was keeping watch of 
the cellar, was arrested, and after 
being put on the rack, was executed. 
His chief accomplices were also 
seized and punished. The alarm ere- 

63 



The Accession of James to the Throne. 

ated by the terrible plot led Parlia^ 
ment to enact some very severe laws 
against the Roman Catholics. 

This is substantially the orthodox 5th 
of November account of the conspiracy, 
though told more by innuendo than by 
direct statement. As the paragraph is 
very general it may be well to go a little 
more into detail in order to get a clear 
idea of the plot and of its results. 

In March of 1603 Queen Elizabeth 
died. She was succeeded by James, the 
son of Mary, Queen of Scots. He was 
James VI. of Scotland, but is commonly 
known as James I. of England. His 
mother had been murdered by Queen 
Elizabeth, and died protesting that she 
suffered because of the Catholic faith 
which she professed. Her son had been 
raised a Protestant by the Scottish Lords. 
The 5th of November, 1605, was a Tues- 
day and had been appointed for the open- 
ing of Parliament. It is the custom of the 
English legislature to meet, on the first 

64 



Discovery of Powder—Arrest of Fawkes. 

day of the session, in one room, the House 
of Lords, to hear the speech from the 
throne. In King James' time that speech 
was delivered by the monarch in person. 
On the morning of this first Tuesday in 
November, 1605, the city of London was 
stirred to its center. The streets rang with 
the news that a diabolical plot had been 
discovered in the course of the night In 
a cellar beneath the House of Lords an 
immense quantity of gunpowder had been 
found. In the cellar a man, who gave the 
name of Johnson, had been arrested. 
When he saw that the game was up, he 
frankly acknowledged that he was there 
to fire the magazine while the King was 
addressing Parliament, and, with one 
blow, destroy the government. When 
questioned, he doggedly refused to say who 
were his accomplices, or whether he had 
any. 

On examination it was found that John- 
son's real name was Guy Fawkes, and that 
the cellar had been hired by one Thomas 
Percy, a Catholic gentleman and a connec- 

6s 



The Flight of the Plotters and Their Death. 

tion of the Earl of Northumberland. It 
also came to light that Percy, with sev- 
eral others, had fled from London on 
Monday, and news arrived from the inte- 
rior shires that they were attempting to in- 
stigate a rebellion against the crown. The 
sheriffs of the various counties through 
which they passed raised men immediately 
and pursued them. On Friday, Novem- 
ber 8th, they were brought to bay. Four 
were killed or mortally wounded, and the 
others were brought to London and lodged 
in the Tower. 

On the day of the discovery of the plot, 
Parliament met and immediately set about 
considering measures designed to insure 
the more effectual execution of the penal 
laws against Catholics. On the Saturday 
of the same week, November 9th, King 
James made a speech to Parliament, in 
which he said that the plot was the direct 
result of Catholic principles, for the Pa- 
pacy, according to him, was ^^the true mys- 
tery of iniquity." He also expressed his 
opinion that ^^these designs were not 

66 



The King Ascribes Plot to Catholics. 

formed by a few," that ^^the whole legion 
of Catholics were consulted," that ^^the 
priests were to pacify their consciences, 
and the Pope confirm a general absolution 
for this glorious deed." Immediately after 
the speech Parliament was prorogued until 
January. 

In the meantime the prisoners were ex- 
amined by the government officials, and 
torture was freely used to force them to 
confess. You know what torture means. 
The unwilling witness was bound upon 
the rack, his limbs were stretched until the 
bones were dislocated and the muscles 
strained. Red-hot irons seared the quiver- 
ing flesh and red-hot pincers tore the nails 
out by the roots. We have the King's di- 
rections concerning Guy Fawkes — ^^If he 
will not othervvdse confess, the gentler tor- 
tures are to be first used unto him, and so 
gradually come to the worst. And so God 
speed your good work." 

On January 15, 1606, a proclamation ap- 
peared offering a reward for the capture 
of three Jesuit priests, John Gerard, 

67 



How the Holiday Was Established. 

Henry Garnet and Oswald Greenway, and 
stating that it had been proved that they 
were particularly implicated in the treason. 
On the 2ist of January, Parliament re- 
assembled and took up the work of the 
Penal Laws. Four days later an act was 
passed providing for the observance of the 
anniversary of the discovery of the plot. 
In that act the guilt of the crime was laid 
upon ^^many malignant and devilish pa- 
pists, Jesuits and seminary priests, much 
envying the true and free possession of the 
Gospel by the nation, under the greatest, 
most learned and most religious monarch 
who had ever occupied the throne.'' 

On January 27th eight of the prisoners 
were put on trial. The indictment charged 
that the plot was contrived by Garnet, Ger- 
ard, Greenway and other Jesuits, to whose 
traitorous persuasions the prisoners at the 
bar had wickedly yielded. They were all 
found guilty, and four were executed on 
January 30th, and the others on January 
31st. 



68 



Arrest and Execution of the Jesuits. 

On the day the first batch suffered, 
Father Garnet was captured. His hiding 
place had been known for nine days pre- 
viously, but the authorities waited till the 
chief conspirators were out of the way 
before taking him. With him was arrested 
Father Oldcorne, another Jesuit, who was 
never charged with knowledge of the plot. 
Garnet was examined as many as twenty- 
three times before the Council, in the hope 
of incriminating him. But no proofs were 
ever forthcoming that he was guilty of 
any complicity. He was brought to trial 
on March 28th, and on May 3d he was 
hanged. Father Oldcorne was also put to 
death on the charge of having aided and 
abetted Garnet in his attempt to escape. In 
government publications the Gunpowder 
conspirators were from that time de- 
scribed as ^^Garnet, a Jesuit, and his con- 
federates." 

You see, therefore, that from the very 
beginning the Gunpowder Plot was 
treated by the government as the work 
of the Catholic Church. It was char- 

69 



The Triumph of the Protestant Interests. 

acterized as flowing from Catholic prin- 
ciples and as backed by the priests. If 
it were the attempt of a few wild and 
turbulent men, little importance could be 
attached to it But if it could be shown 
to be a Catholic plot, approved by 
the Catholic authorities, it immediately 
assumed immense proportions. Hence, 
you see that from the very moment of its 
discovery it was laid at the door of the 
Papists. Before the conspirators could be 
examined it was attributed to the priests, 
and in the act of Parliament by which the 
religious thanksgiving was established the 
opinion was set forth in unequivocal lan- 
guage that the whole design was caused 
simply and solely by hatred of the Protes- 
tant religion. The result was the destruction 
of all hopes of toleration entertained by 
the Catholics. The old laws were enforced 
with new severity, fresh laws were enacted. 
The Protestant politicians, or that part of 
them represented by the government, were 
triumphant. A Ghost had been created, 
which after two centuries and a half still 

70 



Our Knowledge of the Facts One-Sided. 

scares Protestants away from the Catholic 
Church. The charge of disloyalty was 
fixed upon Catholics, and the very word 
Jesuit was entered in our dictionaries as a 
synonym for treason, craft and all iniquity. 
It is a very suggestive fact that our 
knowledge of the trial and of the de- 
signs of the conspirators comes to us 
from one source. In those days there 
were no enterprising newspapers to con- 
duct investigations on their own responsi- 
bility and to spread an account of the pro- 
ceedings in court broadcast among the peo- 
ple. We are dependent entirely on the 
government officials for what we know. 
Even in our days, and with all our oppor- 
tunities, it would not be entirely safe to 
take for granted all that the law officers 
of the State might assert. It is not an un- 
common allegation in our sensational trials 
that the police have been more anxious to 
convict a prisoner than to discover the 
truth. If such allegations can be made, and 
by men of reputation, in this free country 
where the light beats so fiercely on all pub- 

71 



The Official Account of the Plot. 

lie proceedings, we can well imagine what 
may have been done in the secrecy of the 
torture chamber in a hasty trial at a time 
when all documents were controlled by the 
prosecution — ^w^hen the prosecution meant 
a government determined to make political 
capital out of the guilt of the accused. 

From the official history we learn the 
following account of the progress of the 
plot: James I. came to the throne in 1603. 
Elizabeth had harried the Catholics until 
the very last, and only two months before 
she died a proclamation ordered all Cath- 
olic ecclesiastics to leave the country, under 
pain of death. With the accession of 
James the Catholics hoped that at least the 
memory of his mother would restrain his 
hand. They did not petition him for free- 
dom of worship, as we understand it — all 
they asked was permission to have their 
worship at least in private houses, if not 
with approbation yet without molestation. 
Now, at that time, every Catholic who did 
not attend the Protestant church was fined 
twenty pounds a month. As money then 

72 



The Reimposition of Catholic Fines. 

was at least ten times as valuable as now, a 
Catholic whose conscientious convictions 
would not permit him to take part in the 
Anglican service had to pay $1000 a month 
for his refusal. The answer which James 
gave to the Catholic petition was a promise 
not to exact those fines. Though only half 
a loaf, it was better than no bread, and the 
Catholics were tolerablv content because 
they were relieved from an imposition 
which was surely reducing them all to 
beggary. The king's promise was ob- 
served until the following year. Then, like 
a bolt from the clear sky, came a proclama- 
tion banishing all priests beyond the seas. 
The order went forth that the fines for 
non-attendance were to be collected at once. 
Not only were those fines to be exacted in 
the future, but the back dues, which, ac- 
cording to the King's word, had been prac- 
tically remitted, were now demanded in a 
lump. 

When King James came down from 
Scotland he brought with him his Scotch 
Lords. They were a hungry crowd, and the 

73 



Farmed Out to the Scotch Nobles. 

feeling between the. English and the 
Scotch, at no time good, was now more 
bitter than ever. This feeling was shared 
by Protestants as well as Catholics, and has 
lasted with much of its ancient virulence 
even to this day. Those needy adventurers 
from the North saw a gold mine in the 
Catholics. James actually farmed out the 
Englishmen who refused to go to the Prot- 
estant church to his Scotch followers, 
granting them liberty, to use his own 
words, ^^to make profit of them." Is it any 
wonder that when Guv Fawkes was under 
examination before the King and his Coun- 
cil he replied to a Scotch nobleman who 
asked him what he intended to do with all 
the gunpowder, ^^To blow the Scotch beg- 
gars back to their native mountains." 

Now, it was said that as soon as James 
broke his promise certain daring and reck- 
less Catholics of good family conspired to 
get revenge. In 1604 Robert Catesby pro- 
posed a plan to John Wright and Thomas 
Winter to blow up their persecutors. Guy 
Fawkes, who had seen service in the Neth- 

74 



The Plotters Hire a House Near Palace. 

erlands, was brought over as a man likely 
to be of service. To those four, three 
others, among whom was Percy, were 
added later, making the original number 
of the conspirators. 

About the middle of December, 1604, 
the conspirators are said to have com- 
menced operations. The place where the 
Lords met was a chamber in a house about 
fifty feet from the river Thames. Under 
the chamber was a room commonly called 
a cellar, but which was in reality a large 
room on the ground floor on a level with 
the street. This room was usually rented 
out. Betw^een the Parliament house and 
the river were several lodging or tenement 
houses. One of these houses was leased 
by Percy in May, and in December it is 
said that the conspirators began to dig a 
tunnel from the cellar of this house in 
under the house of Parliament. It was the 
intention to run the mine directly under 
the Peers' chamber and to place therein 
sufficient gunpowder to effect their pur- 
pose. They began their work on Decem- 

75 



Begin Tunnel Under House of Lords. 

ber nth, and by Christmas they had 
reached the foundations of the Parliament 
house. The earth which was taken from 
the tunnel was said to be hidden under the 
turf in an adjoining garden, and they pro- 
tected the tunnel as they went with framed 
timbers. After the Christmas holidays 
they began their work on the foundations, 
which they found "very hard to beat 
through." . From the beginning of Jan- 
uary, 1605, to the middle of March they 
worked at the foundations but were able 
to get only half way. One morning as 
they were digging they heard a rushing 
noise in the cellar or room above their 
heads. Fearing they were discovered they 
sent Fawkes to investigate. He found 
that the noise proceeded from the moving 
of a store of coal which one Bright was 
selling out. Fawkes carefully surveyed the 
place and remarking that it was immedi- 
ately under the Peers' chamber considered 
that it was just the place to fire the mine. 
Accordingly he told Percy, who went and 
hired it. The tunnel was now abandoned 

76 



Find a Cellar and Store Powder. 

and the powder was transferred to the 
cellar. The barrels were covered with 
firewood, and the conspirators dispersed 
to await the assembling of Parliament, 
seven months afterward. 

During this interval the money of the 
conspirators ran low and it became neces- 
sary to initiate certain Catholic gentlemen 
of fortune into the plot. One of these, 
Francis Tresham, was brother-in-law of 
Lord Monteagle, a Catholic peer, who 
would attend the opening of Parliament. 

On the 26th of October, ten days be- 
fore the famous 5th of November, Lord 
Monteagle received an anonymous letter 
in which he was warned "to devise some 
excuse to shift your attendance at this Par- 
liament; for God and man hath concurred 
to punish the wickedness of this time." 
Monteagle took the letter to Salisbury, 
who was then what we would now call 
Prime Minister. Salisbury kept the letter 
for several days, and finally, about the 
end of the month, he showed it to King 
James. James interpreted it to mean that 



Letter Warning Lord Monteagle. 

it was proposed to blow up Parliament 
wnth gunpowder. The act of Parliament 
which established the 5th of November as 
a holiday, says that the treason ^Vould 
have turned to utter ruin of this whole 
kingdom had it not pleased Almighty God 
by inspiring the King's most excellent maj- 
esty with a divine spirit to discover some 
dark phrases in a letter." Still nothing 
was done by the government until the 
night of the 4th of November, when a 
guard was sent to search the room under 
the Lords' chamber, and there Guy 
Fawkes was found and the gunpowder, as 
I have already described. 

This is the story of the origin of the 
plot as given in the evidence published 
by the government, which evidence is our 
sole source of information. It is an ex- 
traordinary story and deserves careful 
examination. Of course, within the limits 
of a lecture like this it would be weari- 
some and confusing to go minutely into 
the evidence. But there are certain 
broad features of the transaction which 

78 



Loyalty a Virtue, But With Limits. 

deserve notice, and to present them will 
not, I hope, be too severe a strain on your 
attention. 

In the first place, then, you will remem- 
ber that when Parliament was forming 
the great Ghost which was to frighten 
future ages, the guilt of the plot was laid 
at the door of the Catholics. Popes, 
priests, Jesuits and all, were at the bottom 
of it, and they had no reason in the world 
except an ungodly hatred of the Protestant 
religion. 

Now, I am far from justifying such a 
crime as the Gunpowder Plot, but I am 
just as far from justifying King James and 
his ministers. Loyalty is a virtue incul- 
cated by the Church, but loyalty has its 
limits. A government exists for the bene- 
fit of the governed, not for the benefit of 
the governors. To a good government, 
or even to a half decent government, we 
are bound by the law of God to be obedi- 
ent, not because we are afraid of the gov- 
ernment, but because of God's law. To a 
bad government no man is bound to be 

79 



Plots and Rebellions in Sixteenth Century. 

loyal. On that doctrine the fathers of the 
United States took their stand, and on that 
doctrine every American citizen stands 
with them. 

In the days of James I. things were far 
different from what they are now. There 
was no popular government in the proper 
sense of the term. Parliament met and 
began to show some signs of political 
freedom ; but Parliament was still a crea- 
tion of rotten boroughs and had not in 
the early years of King James' reign re- 
covered from the despotism of Henry 
VIII. and Elizabeth. In our times politi- 
cal changes are effected by a campaign 
among the people and a victory at the 
ballot box; in James' time political 
changes were effected by plots and rebel- 
lions. In the time of Queen Mary of 
England the English Protestants had 
risen twice, but unsuccessfully. In 
the time of Queen Mary of Scotland 
the Presbyterians were in a condition 
of chronic rebellion and succeeded. The 
conspirators might well have called to 

80 



Persecutions Under Bloody Elizabeth. 

James' memory the fact that his father 
had perished in a successful gunpowder 
plot engineered by the leaders of the 
Scotch Presbyterians. Hence when wx 
read of rebellion in those days we must 
judge of it according to the standard of 
those days, and instead of condemning it 
in the abstract and merely as rebellion, 
let us ask ourselves, was there any provo- 
cation for it? 

As we have seen, the great Protestant 
tradition had it that there was no reason 
whatever except the ingrained disloyalty 
of Catholics towards a Protestant govern- 
ment. Let us see what are the facts. 

When Elizabeth came to the throne 
after the death of her sister, Mary, in 
1558, or nearly half a century before the 
Gunpowder plot, she began to root out the 
old relisfion with fire and sword. Since 
the days when the might of the Roman 
Empire was warring with the infant 
Church there was never such a persecu- 
tion. During the whole of Elizabeth's 
reign the rack seldom stood idle and the 

81 



Newman Describes the Martyrs' Pains. 

ax was glutted with blood. All priests 
were comprehended under a general sen- 
tence of death, and those who aided them 
were felons, whose end was the halter or 
imprisonment for life. To wear an Agnus 
Dei, a little piece of wax stamped with 
the figure of a lamb to remind us of the 
Lamb of God who taketh away the sins 
of the V\^orld, was punishable by outlawry, 
forfeiture of all goods and chattels to the 
Queen and imprisonment for life. 

Nor has this prohibition been at 
all times an empty menace. The pos- 
session of an Agnus Dei was the fore- 
most charge in the indictment brought 
against the first of our Martyrs 
among Missionary priests in the reign 
of bloody Elizabeth. ^^As soon as the 
Sheriff came into the chamber," say 
the Acts of the martyrdom of Cuth- 
bert Maine, ^^he took Mr. Maine by 
the bosom and said to him, What art 
thou? He answered, I am a man. 
Whereat the Sheriff, being very hot, 
asked if he had a coat of mail under 
his doublet; and so unbuttoned it 
and found an Agnus Dei case about 

82 



Racked, Hanged, Cut Down, Emboweled. 

his neck, which he took from him, 
and called him traitor, rebel, with 
many other opprobrious names.'' 
Maine was hanged, cut down alive, 
falling from a great height, and then 
quartered. He was the first fruit of 
a sanguinary persecution which lasted 
a hundred years. John Wilson, while 
they tore out his heart, said, ^^I for- 
give the Queen, and all that are the 

- cause of my death." Edward Cam- 
pion was cruelly torn and rent upon 
the rack at divers times. ^^Before 
he went to the rack he used to fall 
down at the rack-house door, upon 
both knees, to commend himself to 
God's m.ercy; and upon the rack 
he called continuously upon God, 
repeating often the holy name of 
Jesus. His keeper asked him the 
next day how he felt his hands 
and feet, he answered, ^Not ill, be- 
cause not at all.' He was hanged 
and emboweled at Tyburn." Ralph 
Sherwin came next; the hangman 
taking hold of him with his bloody 

. hands which had been busy with the 
bowels of the martyred priest who 
preceded him, said to him, thinking 

83 



Needles Thrust Under His Nails. 

to terrify him, ^^Come, Sherwin, take 
thou also thy wages." But the holy 
man, nothing dismayed, embraced 
him with a cheerful countenance, and 
reverently kissed the blood that stuck 
to his hands; at which the people 
were much moved. He had been 
twice racked, and now he was dealt 
with as his brother before him. 
Thom.as Sherwood, after six months' 
imprisonment in a dark and filthy 
hole, was hanged, cut down alive, dis- 
membered, boweled and quartered. 
Alexander Brian had needles thrust 
under his nails, was torn upon the 
rack, hanged and beheaded. George 
Haydock was suffered to hang but a 
very little while, when the Sheriff or- 
dered the rope to be cut, and the 
whole butchery to be performed upon 
him while he was alive and perfectly 
sensible. John Finch was dragged 
through the streets, his head beating 
all the way upon the stones ; was then 
thrust in a dark and fetid dungeon, 
with no bed but the damp floor; was 
fed sparingly, and on nothing but 
oxen's liver. Here he was left first 
for weeks, then for months; till at 

84 



Laity Persecuted as Well as Priests. 

length he was hanged, and his quar- 
ters sent to the four chief towns of 
Lancashire. Richard White, being 
cut down alive, pronounced the sa- 
cred name of Jesus twice, while the 
hangman had his hands in his bowels. 
James Claxton was first put into the 
little ease, that is, a place where he 
could neither stand, lie, nor sit; there 
he was for three days fed on bread 
and water. Then he was put into 
the mill to grind ; then he was hanged 
up by the hands, till the blood sprang 
forth at his finger ends; at length 
he was hanged, dying at the age of 
twenty-one years. — Newman s Present 
Position of Catholics. 

But the clergy were not the only suf- 
ferers. It was death to reconcile any one 
to the Catholic Church; it was outlawry 
to hear Mass, to receive the Sacraments, to 
educate children as Catholics, to wear or 
possess rosaries or crosses. To refuse to 
acknowledge the Queen's spiritual pri- 
macy or to attend the Protestant services 
was punished with fine and imprisonment. 
In the twentieth year of Elizabeth's reign 

85 



Rich and Poor Equally Plundered. 

we read of a certain Elinore Brome, wife 
of Sir Christopher Brome, who was con- 
victed of a felony and punished as a felon 
for wearing an Agnus Dei sent to her by 
her sister. In 1596 the prisons of York 
were filled with those who refused to 
consider Elizabeth the head of the 
Church, and eleven were executed, three 
priests and eight laymen. 

The fines were levied unsparingly both 
on the rich and the poor. At first non- 
attendance at Protestant service was pun- 
ished by a fine of one shilling a Sunday, 
but it was soon raised, as I have already 
said, to twenty pounds a month. After- 
wards men were made to pay ten pounds 
for their Catholic wives, ten pounds for 
their children and ten pounds for their 
servants, and, in order to squeeze them 
to the last drop, thirteen months were 
counted in the year. Those who were un- 
able to pay were stripped of their goods. 
Coverlets and blankets were taken from 
the beds in the cottages, nay, the very 
beds themselves, the furniture, the cloth 

86 



Homes Broken Into Day and Night. 

the people had spun for the winter cloth- 
ing for their children, were seized. The 
food that was cooking on the fire was 
poured away, and the pot or pan was 
carried off by the Queen's officers. In one 
list of those who refused to go to the 
Protestant services, 2,000 names are writ- 
ten, and of those all but fifty were of the 
middle class and the poor. In one year, 
in the city of York alone, 1,000 were in- 
dicted; in Lancashire, 600; in various 
other counties over 6,000. In Hereford 
409 families were reduced to beggary. 
Those whose means permitted fled over 
seas, but the vast majority were compelled 
by circumstances to remain at home and 
either suffer beggary, imprisonment and 
even death, or else sell their souls. 

Add to this that the privacy of the home 
was liable to be broken at any time of the 
day or night by the officers of the law, 
who w^ere empowered to make search for 
objectionable persons or for superstitious 
objects. These officers of the law were 
notorious scoundrels, who made a living 

87 



Whole Villages Sacked and Spoiled. 

by plundering Catholics. The doors 
were burst open, the sick dragged out of 
their beds, the beds ripped to pieces, the 
flooring torn up, the walls pierced, locks 
forced, closets, drawers, coffers, rifled. 
Scarcely a night passed, we have it on con- 
temporary authority, even in the neighbor- 
hood of London, but soldiers and catch- 
poles broke into quiet men's houses and 
stole everything they could lay their hands 
on and carried off the unfortunate Cath- 
olic householder to prison unless a bribe 
large enough were forthcoming. 

The monotony of assaults on individuals 
was varied by raids on a more extensive 
scale. Whole villages were suddenly sur- 
rounded and sacked. The Catholics fled 
to the woods, and the Protestant preachers 
who usually led such ^^drives" plundered 
at their own sweet will. Death itself was 
a relief when compared with imprison- 
ment. The jails were filthy holes, full of 
vermin and disease. Out of fifty-eight 
persons at one time imprisoned by the 



88 



Provocation Enough for Powder Plot. 



Archbishop of York for refusing the test 
oath, forty died in prison. 

I recall those things not to create bad 
feeling. Thank God those times are past 
and gone. I present you with this faint 
picture of the reality so that yon may 
answer for yourselves the question: Sup- 
pose all the Catholics did conspire to blow 
up the King, did they not have provoca- 
tion? Would it be any wonder if a small 
knot of men, suffering from such laws as 
those, would be driven by their despair 
to the wild justice of revenge? It is neces- 
sary to invoke the supposition that it was 
hatred of the Protestant faith and of the 
liberty of the Gospel which nerved the 
conspirators to that daring which is the 
last refuge of the wretched. Of course 
the design was terrible, was diabolical, if 
you w^ill. Let those who wish to dwell 
on the appalling results of the explosion 
do so if they please: but it is only com- 
mon justice to dwell also on the provoca- 
tion. The persecution was more diaboli- 
cal, more terrible than the plot, because 

89 



We Do Not Praise and We Do Not Blame. 

there was no reason whatsoever, except 
greed and politics, for the persecution; as 
incentives to the plot were the mangled 
limbs of the martyrs, the father rotting in 
the dungeon, the wife and children starv- 
ing in the beggared home. If it were 
true that all the Catholics had conspired 
to end their oppression by one dread 
blow, let those who have no sympathy for 
the injured, let those who have no indig- 
nation against wrong, let the enemies of 
justice and the friends of tyrants blame 
them — ^we cannot praise them, but neither 
do we blame. 

But is it true that the Catholics of Eng- 
land had a part in the conspiracy? From 
the very beginning the government strained 
every nerve to connect the plot with 
the whole Catholic body. Although there 
was absolutely no evidence forthcoming, 
the public utterances of the King and his 
ministers stamped it as the Papist conspir- 
acy. The tradition was founded, the 
Ghost walked abroad. But lies cannot last 
forever. Even those who believe in the 



90 



Gardiner Exculpates Catholic Body. 

reality of the plot attribute it to a hand- 
ful of hotheads. In the very latest book 
published on the subject, *What Gun- 
powder Plot Was," the author, Professor 
Gardiner, a Protestant, speaks the follow- 
ing weighty words : 

No candid persons, indeed, can feel 
surprise that any English Roman 
Catholic, especially a Roman Catho- 
lic priest, should feel anxious to wipe 
away the reproach which the plot has 
brought upon those who share his 
faith. Not merely were his spiritual 
predecessors subjected to a persecu- 
tion borne with the noblest and least 
self-assertive constancy, simply in con- 
sequence of what is now known to 
all historical students to have been 
the entirely false charge that the plot 
emanated from, or was approved by 
the English Roman Catholics as a 
body, but this false belief prevailed 
so widely that it must have hindered, 
to no slight extent, the spread of that 
organization which he regards as hav- 
ing been set forth by divine institu- 
tion for the salvation of mankind. 



91 



The Charge That the Priests Approved. 

This opinion, from one of the most 
eminent of English historians, should 
sweep away forever the charge that the 
plot was the work of the Catholic com- 
munity. It is a clear, frank acknowledg- 
ment that, though the Catholics were so 
sorely tried, they were guiltless of the 
charge so pertinaciously brought against 
them. What George Washington accom- 
plished for America let us hope that the 
words of Professor Gardiner shall accom- 
plish for the whole English-speaking 
world. 

But there remains a further charge, that 
if the body of English Catholics did not 
approve of the plot, at least their spiritual 
advisers did. You will remember that 
after the discovery both King and Parlia- 
ment attributed it to the priests. The 
preamble to the Act establishing the 5th 
of November as a holiday declares that 
it was the work of many malignant and 
devilish Papists, Jesuits and seminary 
priests. One Jesuit, Father Garnet, was 
found guilty and executed; another Jesuit 

92 



The Seminary Priests and the Jesuits. 

suffered the death penalty for attempting 
to help his brother in religion to escape. 

To understand the terms used here, it 
may be well to state that in Elizabeth's 
time the old Catholic clergy of England 
began to die out. The Catholic Bishops 
had been imprisoned, and there was no 
one to take the place of the disappearing 
pastors. Of course, it was absolutely im- 
possible, because of the persecution, to 
train up priests in England, so Cardinal 
Allen, an Englishman, established a sem- 
inary or college at Douay, to which young 
Englishmen might repair. When they 
were ordained they returned to England, 
carrying their lives in their hands. The 
Jesuit Order, which had been founded in 
1540, now began to attract some of the 
English scholars who had been driven 
from Oxford. They, too, came back to 
their native land. The Douay priests 
were known as missionary or seminary 
priests, and together with the Jesuits they 
went up and down the country, encourag- 
ing the weak, firing the zeal of the con- 

93 



The Charge Against the Three Jesuits. 

stant and restoring thousands who had 
fallen away. Their success made them 
objects of the special hatred of the Protes- 
tant party, and this is the reason for the 
anxiety shown by the government to con- 
nect them with the Gunpowder Plot. 

As we have already seen, three Jesuit 
priests — Gerard, Garnet and Greenway — 
were denounced in a proclamation as 
^^peculiar practicers" in the treason. One 
of them. Garnet, was caught and exe- 
cuted. The conspirators were said to 
have bound themselves by a solemn oath 
to carry out their design. Afterward, to 
make their vow more solemn, they re- 
ceived Holy Communion. At the trial, 
Coke, the Attorney-General, told the jury 
that this oath was administered by Father 
Gerard. If this were true the guilt of 
the Jesuits would be beyond question. 
Coke held the confessions extorted from 
the prisoners on the rack, and therefore 
pretended to speak by the book. Fortu- 
nately the text used by Coke has come 
down to us. It is Fawkes' description of 

94 



Attorney-General Suppresses Evidence. 

the beginning of the conspiracy. It states 
that the original plotters met in a room 
apart and took the oath. They then went 
into another room, where they heard Mass 
and received the sacrament from Father 
Gerard. Then followed the words, "But 
he saith that Gerard was not acquainted 
with their purpose." 

As I have said, we have a copy of the 
confession used by the Attorney-General. 
The government's plan was, by hook or 
by crook, to incriminate the Jesuits. We 
find, by an examination of the manuscript, 
that when Coke came to the statement, 
"Gerard was not acquainted with their 
purpose," he marked it off with red ink 
and wrote on the margin, "Thus far," as a 
sign that the evidence which would clear 
the priest should not be read. This is 
only one specimen of the wholesale and 
systematic falsification of the evidence 
which the government committed in order 
to make a case. 

Two days after the plot was discovered, 
the archpriest of the English Catholics 

9S 



Catholic Authorities Condemn Plot. 

published an address to his co-religion- 
ists, in which he speaks of the conspiracy 
as ^^an intolerable, uncharitable, scandal- 
ous and desperate fact," '^a detestable de- 
vice"; he declared that ^Vithout most 
grievous offense of God and Holy Church, 
private violent attempts cannot be thought 
of, much less aided or maintained by 
Catholics." 

More than this, we know that in 1604 
James was in communication with the 
Pope. As you remember, there was high 
hope that when James came to the throne 
he would at least give toleration to the 
Catholics. The communications with 
Rome were on this subject and had for 
their object some sort of a mutual accom- 
modation. The negotiations came to noth- 
ing in the end, but they had this one re- 
sult that strict letters were sent to the 
Jesuits and missionary priests warning 
them to discountenance all disloyal prac- 
tices and to prevent, as far as they could, 
disturbances against the government. This 
policy was kept up even when the penal 

96 



What Was the True Inwardness of the Plot? 

laws were put in force again, the policy 
of the Catholics being expressed in the 
words of the archpriest, that ^^our quiet 
behavior may procure a mitigation of our 
troubles.'' 

But the tiger had tasted blood. Little 
did the heads of the Catholic Church in 
England know of the wickedness of those 
who would exterminate their religion. We 
have seen that the vast body of the Eng- 
lish Catholics had no connection with the 
plot; we have seen that the missionary 
priests and Jesuits were guiltless. We now 
come to the most interesting question of 
all, ^What was the true inwardness of the 
plot itself?" 

Elizabeth was the last of her house. 
When she died the family of Henry 
VIII. came to an end. . The question of 
her successor, therefore, was one of great 
anxiety to the politicians who held power 
under her. In those days the notion of 
hereditary succession was not as clear as 
now. It was complicated by Acts of Par- 
liament excluding various families from 

97 



Elizabeth and the Protestant Interest. 

the crown, and the will of the preceding 
sovereign counted for much in the choice- 
During Elizabeth's time her own title was 
questioned. She was the daughter of Anne 
Boleyn, born during the life of Henry's 
first wife, Catherine of Arragon. The di- 
vorce of Henry from Catherine was pro- 
nounced by the Reformers; if she wished 
to uphold her legitimacy she should uphold 
the Reformation. On her accession, there- 
fore, she surrounded herself with the Prot- 
estant politicians and strove in every way 
she could to crush out Catholicism. 

The most formidable competitor for the 
crown during Elizabeth's reign was Mary, 
Queen of Scots. If Elizabeth were illegiti- 
mate, Mary was the rightful queen. She, 
however, was an ardent Catholic; the 
whole Protestant party was united against 
her. When Elizabeth at last got Mary in 
her power she put an end to her preten- 
sions by sending her to the block. 

It is a curious fact that in those times 
we hear much of plots, conspiracies and 
treason. One of the commonest devices of 

98 



How Mary's Death Was Brought About. 

the government was to set its agents creat- 
ing a plot and then at the proper hour 
discover it. For a long time Elizabeth 
shrank from the crime of murdering her 
cousin, the Scottish Queen, Her minis- 
ters, however, knew hovv^ to overcome her 
scruples. A plot was contrived into which 
several young Catholics were inveigled. 
The object of the plot was to kill Eliza- 
beth, and to seat Mary on the English 
throne. Now we know that the ministers 
were Vv^ell acquainted with this plot. All 
the letters between the conspirators passed 
through their hands. At the moment they 
judged opportune the plot was discovered 
and the papers laid before Elizabeth. The 
result was Mary's death. During the rest 
of the reign we are constantly hearing of 
plots. Of them an acute French writer 
remarked that no matter by whom they 
were concocted, they all had this in com- 
mon, they were extremely beneficial to 
those against whom they were directed. 

The chief minister during the closing 
years of Elizabeth was Robert Cecil, Lord 

99 



The Candidates for the English Crown. 

Salisbury. He was of the Protestant in- 
terest, was very bitter toward Catholics, 
and depended for his power on keeping 
the Protestant party in office. His char- 
acter has been described bv historians 
with a singular unanimity. He was a man 
utterly devoid of truth or morality. While 
the minister of Elizabeth, he was secretly 
intriguing with James, and while the 
minister of James he was in receipt ot a 
pension from the King of Spain for be- 
traying State secrets. 

The candidates for the crown at the 
death of Elizabeth were the son of the 
King of Spain, Arabella Stuart, and 
James, King of Scotland. The Spanish 
claim was favored by the extreme Catho- 
lics; Arabella Stuart's claim was favored 
by the extreme Protestants, But the vast 
body of the Catholics had the national 
antipathy to Spain and hoped that the son 
of Mary Queen of Scots would at least 
tolerate his mother's religion. Salisbury, 
though of the Protestant interest, was not 
favorable to the claims of Arabella Stuart. 



100 



James of Scotland a Compromise. 

Her friends, especially the famous Sir 
Walter Raleigh, were his enemies, and his 
one object in life was to keep his own 
place secure. Therefore it was that long 
before Elizabeth's death he entered into 
correspondence with James, and when his 
time came he was able to swing his party 
into line for the King of Scots. James 
was therefore a compromise candidate, 
and the Catholics naturally looked to him 
for some relief from the penal laws. When 
he ascended the throne he began to show 
some signs of tolerance, and in reply to a 
Catholic deputation he promised to remit 
the fines for non-attendance at the Protes- 
tant service. 

Having thus secured the ^^machine," 
Salisbury turned the machinery to make 
his own position secure. His government 
was a government of spies and informers. 
If we wish to get a good idea of it, let 
us look to the English methods still prac- 
ticed in Ireland. Informers abound. Not 
only do they get into secret societies to 
betray them, but they establish secret so- 

lOI 



Salisbury and the Catholic Growth. 

cieties in order to have something to be- 
tray. That Salisbury was an adept in this 
system of statecraft all historians acknow- 
ledge. We are, therefore, not surprised 
to read that a plot to dethrone King 
James was discovered in 1603, the year of 
the King's accession. Raleigh was found 
guilty of complicit}^, and his subsequent 
imprisonment rendered him harmless to 
Salisbury. 

But the Catholic party remained; and 
the Catholic party was increasing by leaps 
and bounds. The result of the promise 
made by James to remit the fines was 
startling. In one year ten thousand Prot- 
estants returned to the old faith, out of 
which they had been harried in Eliza- 
beth's reign. The situation vv^as becoming 
desperate. If conversions should continue 
at this rate, the place which Salisbury 
had built up for himself on the foundation 
of Protestantism would soon fall to the 
ground. Unless the growth of Catholi- 
cism could be stopped, Salisbury's ambi- 
tion was doomed. To prevent this alarm- 

102 



Turns James Against the Puritans. 

ing defection in the ranks of Protestantism 
now became the aim of a man who knew 
no scruple when his personal aims were to 
be attained. 

The first lever he used was the Puri- 
tans. As you know, Protestantism is not 
one coherent system of religion. Its basis 
is denial of or protest against Catholicism. 
But all Protestants do not deny the same 
doctrines or the same number of doctrines. 
Some deny one, some two, some three, and 
so on until you reach those who deny all. 
As it is to-day, so it was in the days of 
King James. There were two great par- 
ties among the Protestants, some protest- 
ing against more and some protesting 
against less. The section which protested 
against more was known as the Puritan 
party. They did not believe in ceremonies, 
or in surplices, or in making the Sign of 
the Cross, or in a fixed form of prayer, 
or in church government by Bishops. 
James had a special hatred for the Puri- 
tans. He declared that since he was a 
child they had made his life miserable; 

103 



Demands Same Measures for Catholics. 

he expressed his opinion of their aversion 
to the episcopacy in the words, ^^No 
Bishop, no king," and it was more than 
suspected that their preferences lay not 
with him, but with the other claimant, Ara- 
bella Stuart. 

It was easy, therefore, to turn the King 
against the Puritans and to induce him to 
execute the laws which demanded con- 
formity with the Established Church. No 
sooner had he done so than Salisbury took 
advantage of the fact to remind him that 
he should be just and demand from Catho- 
lics what he asked from Puritans. So well 
did the minister press his point, that in 
1604 w^s issued the proclamation banish- 
ing the priests, and soon the collection of 
fines gave the King an easy method of 
recompensing his Scottish followers. But, 
Salisbury was not satisfied with this step. 
The Catholics were numerous; some of the 
great noblemen favored them. One espe- 
cially, the Earl of Northumberland, was 
Salisbury's rival. The King might change 
his mind. A new policy would mean new 

104 



The Dramatic Discovery of Powder. 

advisers. It was necessary to clinch the 
matter, once for all. Turn back the Cath- 
olic tide, and the fortunes of the house of 
Cecil would be secure. When, therefore, 
we ask the question. What was the true 
inwardness of the Gunpowder Plot, there 
is a strong antecedent probability that a 
scheme which was of such benefit to Salis- 
bury may not have been concocted with- 
out Salisbury's superintendence. 

And, indeed, when we come to examine 
the story, we are met with some extraor- 
dinary questions. 

The discovery of the plot was dramatic. 
The night before Parliament met the gun- 
powder was found. The people were told 
that only a special providence had saved 
the government. So secretly had the Pa- 
pists worked that their design had all but 
succeeded. 

This dramatic situation was intensified 
by the story of the mine. If they had 
been able to carry out their first designs, 
nothing could have saved Parliament 
from utter destruction. Yet, if it is ever 

105 



No One Ever Saw the Alleged Tunnel. 

possible to prove a negative, if any evi- 
dence can show that a certain thing never 
happened, we have conclusive evidence 
that the whole story of the mine is a 
fraud. 

Suppose that at the time of the anti- 
Catholic meetings in this hall, some Cath- 
olics had hired rooms across the street and 
attempted to run a tunnel under this tem- 
ple to blow up the beetle-browed. Sup- 
pose their design was discovered. Are 
there police enough in this town to keep 
back the crowds who would want to 
see that tunnel and carry away something 
as a relic? Human nature in London at 
the beginning of the seventeenth century 
and human nature in San Francisco at the 
end of the nineteenth, are the same. Yet, 
strange to say, no one ever saw the tunnel 
which the Gunpowder conspirators are 
said to have constructed. No one ever 
saw any trace of it. The walls of the 
Parliament house were burrowed half 
through; when the old Parliament house 
was pulled down in 1823 there was not a 

106 



The Many Engineering Difficulties. 

sign of such burrowing. One man, indeed, 
has put it on record that he discovered 
the place where the conspirators were 
working, but, unfortunately, he puts it on 
the wrong side of the house. Besides, the 
earth which was dug out of the mine is 
another difficulty. Where did it all go? 
The government report says it was hidden 
under the turf in a small garden adjoining; 
but. the government report is absurd. If 
you remark the immense amount of stuff 
that comes out of even a small excavation, 
you can understand the absurdity of the at- 
tempt to hide it away under the turf of a 
small lawn. Add to this that none of the 
conspirators was an engineer, that to dig 
a tunnel through soft soil is a most dan- 
gerous operation; that the place in which 
they worked was a public place, with peo- 
ple passing at all hours of the day and 
night; that for weeks they Vv^ere hammer- 
ing away at a nine-foot wall under a room 
which was open to the public and was 
used as a coal shed, and that, during 
all that time, no one heard them, or sus- 

107 



The Improbabilities of the Cellar. 

pected anything wrong. You might as 
well attempt to make a tunnel across Fifth 
street into the United States Mint, and 
work at the foundations from January to 
March, without being discovered, as do 
what Guv Fawkes and his fellows were 
said to have done. A corps of skilled en- 
gineers might attempt it, but that men, 
who never handled pick or shovel, could 
accomplish it, is simply incredible. 

The second plan is still more extraordi- 
nary. The cellar, as it is called, bore the 
same relation to the House of Lords as 
do the stores under this temple to this hall. 
It was level with the street, and it was 
open to the public. We are asked to be- 
lieve that the conspirators were able to 
bring thirty barrels of gunpowder into 
this room secretly and leave them there 
for seven months, with no protection but 
a covering of bundles of firewood; that 
they separated in March, some going to 
take the waters at Bath, some to visit 
friends, without leaving a single soul to 
watch the place ; that they came back just 

1 08 



The Government a Government of Spies. 

in time for the opening of Parliament and 
found everything undisturbed; and this, 
remember, not in a basement in an out of 
the way place, but on the very ground 
floor of a royal palace, around which 
dwelt hundreds of officials, and in a room 
which was absolutely open to the public. 
We are asked to swallow all this, and, no 
matter how willing we may be, there are 
certain things which pass the powers of 
human credulity. 

All this is supposed to have happened 
under the very nose of a government the 
most suspicious in Europe. Had we not 
unimpeachable testimony to the fact, we 
could hardlv credit how extensive and 
how thoroughly organized its spy system 
was. It had emissaries in every court on 
the continent, and it is an established fact 
that even in Rome itself it was able to get 
the documents sent out to the English 
Catholics before those to whom they were 
addressed ever laid eyes on them. Add to 
this, that the chief conspirators were 
known to the government as lawless and 



109 



Salisbury Knew of the Plot Already. 

turbulent men. Several of them had been 
arrested in Elizabeth's time as likely to 
give trouble, and others had been con- 
cerned in the riots known as Essex's re- 
bellion. Percy, who hired the cellar, was 
particularly distinguished for his reckless- 
ness, and it is known that at the time of 
the plot he was a bigamist, having one 
wife in one county and another wife in 
another. 

Bearing these facts in mind, let us now 
turn our attention to the story of the dis- 
covery. The common account has it, that 
one of the conspirators sent a letter to his 
brother-in-law warning him to remain 
away from the opening of Parliament. 
This was ten days before the date set for 
that ceremony/. At first, it is said, Salis- 
bury made little of the document, but 
that some days afterward the miraculous 
penetration of the monarch, who was 
known as the ^Visest fool in Christen- 
dom," discovered that it referred to an 
attempt to blow up the government with 
gunpowder. 

no 



Was in Communication With Plotters. 

Now, it is as certain as anything can be 
that eighteen months before the discovery 
the government knew what was going on. 
This we know on the authority of the 
government itself. Again, among the 
State papers we find almost every month 
up to the date of the plot references to a 
design soon to be carried out. When, how- 
ever, we discover that Percy was seen com- 
ing out of Salisbury's house at two o'clock 
in the morning, while the plot was still in 
progress, and that Catesby, who was the 
prime mover in the affair, went to the 
same house several nights before the dis- 
covery, and was always brought privately 
in at a back door, and that Lord Mont- 
eagle, who received the alleged warning, 
knew that he was to receive the letter, it 
is not easy to resist the conclusion, sub- 
stantiated by Salisbury's own son, that the 
whole plot was a contrivance of the chief 
minister to advance his own ends. 

This conclusion becomes irresistible 
when we consider the fate of the conspira- 
tors. It is an old axiom that dead men 



III 



Why the Earlier Plotters Were Killed. 

tell no tales. It was not an uncommon 
thing in those days, "the game being se- 
cured, to hang the spaniel that caught it'^ 
Now, when the conspirators fled into the 
interior counties they had no followers 
and no firearms. It was quite easy for 
the law to secure them, all alive. Yet it 
somehow happened that Percy, Catesby 
and two others who were in the plot from 
the beginning, and who could have 
given most information concerning it; 
were shot down, and it also happened 
that the man who killed Percy and Cates- 
by received for his service a pension of 
five dollars a day for life. The two were 
unarmed; he shot at them from behind a 
tree; by killing them he silenced the two 
most important witnesses in the case. If 
we cannot set down his munificent reward 
to his bravery, we can set it down to his 
skill in ridding Salisbury of those who 
might have said too much. 

Such are the chief features of this great 
Gunpowder Plot. We have seen that, even 
were the traditional story true, the Catho- 

112 



The Plot Made Salisbury Secure. 

lies had provocation that human nature 
could hardly bear. We have seen that, in 
spite of al], they remained quiet hoping 
for better times. We have heard the 
words of one of the most eminent living 
historians, an Englishman and Protestant, 
acquitting them of all complicity in it. 
We have seen how the evidence shows 
that the Catholic clergy were entirely in- 
nocent, and we have seen, too, that what 
we know of the inner history of the times 
points to the conclusion that the whole 
scheme, if not devised by Salisbury from 
the beginning, was fostered by him and 
used w^ith diabolical skill to the consoli- 
dation of his political fortunes. 

For the Gunpowder Plot was a success. 
It made Salisbury the most popular man 
in England and annihilated his most for- 
midable rival, the Earl of Northumber- 
land. It was the death blow of Catholi- 
cism. To quote Mr. Jardine, a Protestant 
writer: 

The political consequences of this 
transaction are extremely important 

113 



Confirmed James in Protestantism. 

and interesting. It fixed the timid 
and wavering mind of the king in his 
adherence to the Protestant party, in 
opposition to the Roman Catholics; 
and the universal horror, which was 
naturally excited, not only in Eng- 
land, but throughout Europe, by so 
barbarous an attempt, was artfully 
converted into an engine of suppres- 
sion of the Roman Catholic Church; 
so that the ministers of James L, hav- 
ing procured the reluctant acquies- 
cence of the king, and the cordial 
assent of public opinion, were enabled 
to continue in full force the severe 
laws previously passed against the 
Papists, and to enact others of no less 
rigor and injustice. 

These new laws bore upon the English 
Catholic layman in every relation of life, 
in every profession, in every occupation. 
They deprived him of the right of acting 
as an executor of a will or as a guardian 
of a child. They forbade him to know 
law lest he might defend his rights; they 
forbade him to know medicine lest he 
might heal his sick. He was forbidden to 

114 



What the New Penal Laws Were. 

reside within ten miles of the city of Lon- 
don; he was prohibited from going five 
miles away from his own house unless he 
had permission from four Justices of the 
Peace. His home might be broken into 
at any hour of the day or night, his 
horses and arms seized, his books and 
furniture burned. The government be- 
gan to make profit of him as soon as he 
was born and thev did not cease even 
when he was laid in his grave. For every 
child, not baptized by the Protestant min- 
ister, the parents were fined in the sum 
of one hundred pounds; for every corpse, 
not buried in a Protestant graveyard, the 
heirs were fined in the sum of twenty 
pounds. Besides these, the exaction of 
fines for non-attendance at Protestant serv- 
ice, went merrily on, and the persecution 
of the ministers of religion filled the land 
with blood. 

While the penal laws, the hanging of 
priests, the beggaring of Catholics with 
fines, the turning back of the stream of 
conversions, all contributed to the destrue- 
ns 



Anti-Catholic Opinion Stereotyped. 

tion of Catholicism, yet the gravest dam- 
age done the ancient religion was by the 
plot itself. We have seen how at once 
it was used to affix a stigma of treason and 
cruelty on the whole Church. The popu- 
lar histories said little about the conspira- 
tors themselves, but they said much about 
Rome. Those popular histories made pop- 
ular opinion. The Ghost walked abroad. 
It was a bloody Ghost and the grandfather 
of all the other Ghosts. From the days of 
James L, the Catholic faith became asso- 
ciated in the English mind with all in- 
iquity. It was an institution hating Prot- 
estants with a deadly hatred and sticking 
at nothing in its desire to exterminate 
them. Jesuit became a name of reproach; 
priest a w^ord of mockery. For over two 
centuries, year after year, the 5th of No- 
vember stamped those falsehoods deeper 
in the English mind. But, thank God, 
the night is past and the dawn is grey 
in the sky. The Ghost can walk no longer. 
Men are now recognizing that even were 
the whole account as given by the gov- 

116 



Conclusions From the Evidence We Have. 

ernment true, the Catholic body cannot 
be held accountable for the wild deeds of 
a few who were goaded beyond endur- 
ance. Scholars are searching patiently 
among the records of the past, deciphering 
the crabbed writing of those crabbed pol- 
iticians, and slowly but surely unravelling 
the tangled skein. It may be that we 
shall never know the whole truth con- 
cerning the Gunpowder Plot, but these 
things are put beyond the reach of criti- 
cism. First, the official account that has 
come down to us is falsified in substantial 
matters. Secondly, the plot was known to 
Salisbury long before the Monteagle let- 
ter, and at no time was the King or the 
Parliament in danger of destruction. 
Thirdly, the plot was fostered by Salis- 
bury's tools for the purpose of entrapping 
the clergy, if possible, into its meshes, in 
order to excite public opinion against the 
Church. Fourthly, it is more than prob- 
able that the plot itself was, in the first 
instance, conceived and set on foot by 
Salisbury himself, to contrive the destruc- 

117 



A Short Triumph; Swift Retribution. 

tion of his one remaining rival and to 
consolidate his power by ruining the pros- 
pects of the Catholics. 

He was successful. Protestantism tri- 
umphed, but not the Protestantism which 
he represented. Puritanism came like a 
flood on the nation, and in that flood the 
monarchy itself went down. The country 
was rent and ravaged with civil war and 
the blood of Protestant, shed by Protestant, 
was mingled with the Catholic blood 
which their fathers spilled. Charles I., 
the son of James, went to the block, and 
the last stand made for his craven grand- 
son, James 11. , was made by those Papists 
whom the grandfather had stigmatized as 
naturally disloyal. 

So time brings its revenge. Those days 
are past and gone; but they have their 
lesson for us. They should evoke in our 
minds, not sentiments of resentment, but 
sentiments of toleration. Religion was de- 
based then to further a politician's ambi- 
tion, as religion may be used now. Let 
us be instructed by the past. In this 

ii8 



Church Needs Only Truth and Freedom. 

countty we have set religion in an invio- 
lable sanctaarsT and we have drawn round 
her the magic line that no unhallowed 
foot may cross. She is the Ark of the 
Covenant in the care of those whom she 
has chosen; let no unhallowed hand be 
laid on her. We Catholics have suffered 
most from the prostitution of religion to 
politics; we, therefore, should be the most 
determined to preserve religion free. 
Give us fair play in the present and give 
us fair play in the past. We are not 
ashamed of our record. All we ask is the 
truth. Let its clear and steady beam 
pierce the past. And as it illuminates 
those unfamiliar regions we shall see the 
figure of the grand old Church standing 
majestic, bathed in light, and without 
spot or wrinkle; while in the outer dark- 
ness are the gibbering Ghosts, whose power 
to injure has forever passed away. 



119 



III.-THE POPISH PLOT. 

YOU may have noticed how, from time 
to time, in this city, and in other 
cities of the Union, some spirit 
has moved preachers of various denomina- 
tions to denounce the Pope. A sermon is 
delivered, in which the alleged iniquities 
of Rome are described in lurid colors; 
the doctrines of Catholicism are held up 
to public reprobation; the amazing growth 
of Popery is set forth as a menace to our 
free institutions, and it is confidently pre- 
dicted that, unless the power of the 
Church is in some manner curbed, the 
future of this country is freighted with 
desolation and woe. It has also been re- 
marked that, after the said preachers have 
delivered themselves of their lamentations 
for successive Sundays, something happens 
that make their congregations very desir- 
ous to get rid of them. It may be that 
there is a special providence which takes 

120 



Using the Anti-Catholic Sentiment. 

care of the congregations, and removes 
from the midst of them men whose mission 
it is to stir up strife. It may be that the 
tolerant spirit of our separated brethren 
revolts from the unfounded denunciation 
of men and women whose only crime is 
that they are in communion with the old 
Church, which saw the beginning of all 
other churches. But, generally, there is 
another reason. It will be usually found, 
on examination, that the anti-Catholic 
preacher has long been a candidate for 
dismissal. It is only when he finds that 
he is loosing his hold upon his flock, that 
he thinks of reviving his popularity by 
attacking Rome. A young preacher is 
said to have consulted one of his elders 
in the profession as to the best means of 
stirring up his congregation to renewed 
interest. "My son," said the experienced 
minister in reply, "My son, go for the 
Papists." 

When a congregation is deeply anti- 
Catholic, such advice produces momentary 
success. The members naturally rally 

121 



The People Dearly Love a Grievance. 

round the man who voices their suspicions 
and supplies arguments to their preju- 
dice. In rallying round him they, for a 
time, lose sight of his unfitness and forget 
their grievance against him in the face of 
their greater grievance against the object 
of his attack. 

This is as true of politics as it is of 
religion. There is hardly a community 
which has not a special antipathy. In 
some places it may be a sentiment against 
a certain race; in some places it may be 
a feeling against a certain corporation; in 
most places it is a decided dislike to a 
high rate of taxation. It is common ex- 
perience that unscrupulous politicians try 
to ride into power by catering to such 
antipathies. They put themselves at the 
head of the opposition, and, by a vigorous 
denunciation of the object of popular dis- 
approval, they blind the eyes of the people 
to their personal unfitness. 

As Protestantism is in its nature a 
protest against Catholicism, a strongly 
Protestant nation will be strongly anti- 

122 



Politicians Find the Pope Serviceable. 

Papal. Hence, though the politician may 
have no religion whatsoever, he will find 
it to his advantage to appeal to the anti- 
Catholic spirit. If the leaders of one party 
wish to smirch their opponents it is an 
easy plan to raise the cry that they are in 
league with the Pope. If the accused 
wish to repel the charge they must outdo 
their adversaries in their repudiation of 
Popery. If one party seeks to gain credit 
by taking harsh measures against Catho- 
lics, the other party will go it one better 
and take harsher measures still. If a poli- 
tician blunders in the civil or political 
affairs of the country an easy method of 
turning public attention from his mistakes 
is to raise the cry of danger from Rome. 
It is true that those devices are successful 
only where the anti-Papal feeling is very 
strong and the Catholics very few. The 
motto of the old Roman empire was to 
crush the strong and spare the weak. The 
motto of your politician is to despise the 
weak and to worship the strong. 



123 



The Results of the Gunpowder Plot. 

As we saw in the last lecture, the death- 
blow to Catholicism in England was dealt 
by the Gunpowder Plot. That terrible 
charge was laid at the door of the Catho- 
lics of England. The government ac- 
counts of the conspiracy formed public 
opinion; and the government accounts 
were framed for the purpose of defaming 
the Church. The annual celebration of 
the day in the Establishment perpetu- 
ated the calumny and deepened the public 
hatred of Papists. The sentiment of loy- 
alty, the sentiment of humanity were en- 
listed against bloody fanatics who knew 
no ruth when the interest of their church 
was at stake. When Catholics would 
speak in their own defense the prison 
doors yawned for them and the rack stood 
ready to answer their arguments. The 
fines were reducing them to beggary and 
their numbers were constantly lessened by 
the defections of those to whom the merci- 
less persecution was too hard for flesh and 
blood to bear. 

The result was that Catholics became 

124 



Made the Popular Idea of Papist. 

few and far between. They formed a 
small fraction of the population and their 
abodes were in the remote counties. A 
new generation grew up, which knew of 
Papists only by repute. The oft repeated 
history of the Gunpowder Plot, with its 
conspirators and Jesuits and priests, plan- 
ning the destruction of the country formed 
the popular idea of the Catholic. Is it 
any wonder that Protestant England 
looked upon Popery as the mystery of 
iniquity, and was ready to believe any 
tale, no matter how incredible, about the 
followers of the Pope? 

It is a curious fact that the ultimate re- 
sult of the Gunpowder Plot was a series 
of calamities for the dynasty in whose 
interest it was concocted. You know that 
in King James' reign the power of the 
Puritans, or the extreme party among the 
Protestants, began to grow. James was 
succeeded by his son, Charles I. In his 
reign Puritanism came into conflict first 
with the Established Church, and after- 
ward with the King. In both conflicts 

125 



The Triumph of the Puritan Party. 

Puritanism was triumphant. The Episco- 
palian character of the Anglican Estab- 
lishment was changed into Presbyterian- 
ism and the son of James I. was brought 
to the scafifold. While it is true that the 
arbitrary imposition of taxes was the cause 
of the revolution, it is also true that the 
revolution was made possible by the na- 
tional hatred of Popery. The Puritans 
accused the Bishops of being Papists in 
disguise, and the King, who had married 
a Catholic Princess, was suspected of the 
same superstition. The Puritan revolu- 
tion was religious as well as civil, and its 
chief strength came from that dread of 
Catholicism which the ministers of James 
I. had made a national tradition, and 
the politicians of the Puritan party knew 
well how to use. When the struggle be- 
tween Charles and his Parliament was 
submitted to the arbitrament of war, the 
extreme Protestants took the field against 
the King. After a cruel struggle the 
Puritans were triumphant, and less than 
half a century after the first famous 5th 

126 



The Inevitable Break In Its Ranks. 

of November, Charles I. was executed by 
the victorious revolutionists. 

The triumph of Puritanism accelerated 
the action of a tendency common to all 
Protestant sects, namely the tendency to 
division. While all the Puritans were 
hostile to church government by Bishops, 
some were hostile to church government 
altogether. The Presbyterians protested 
against Episcopacy, but in its place they 
substituted a government by synods or 
other assemblies far more centralized and 
far more despotic. The Independents 
held that each congregation was separate 
and independent. To-day we call the In- 
dependents, Congregationalists. The party 
which triumphed in England was not the 
Presbyterian faction, but the Independent 
faction. At the head of a powerful army 
Cromwell maintained the supremacy of 
his sect. England had exchanged the 
royal despotism for a military despotism. 
When Cromwell died the supremacy of 
the Independents came to an end. Twenty 
years had passed away since the struggle 

127 



The Restoration of King Charles 11. 

with Parliament began. Civil war had 
scourged the nation and Puritanism had 
disgusted the mass of the people with its 
hypocrisy and its sourness. The royalists 
and the Presbyterians combined forces and 
in 1660 Charles II. was restored to the 
throne of bis father. 

With his accession begins the history of 
modern politics. Up to this date the gov- 
ernment of England had been a personal 
government. The likes and dislikes of 
the King made and unmade ministers. 
Henceforward the government is a gov- 
ernment by Parliament. Although in the- 
ory the King still retained supreme au- 
thority and the choice of his advisers, 
those advisers became more and more the 
creatures of a majority in the legislature. 
Parliament was not then a democratic 
assembly representing the people. The 
franchise was limited and the seats were 
filled with the nominees of the great 
houses, of the country squires and of the 
wealthy merchants of the cities. Govern- 
ment by party began. As in this country 

128 



Rise of Modem Political Parties. 

we have two great parties, Democrats 
and Republicans, so in England they have 
two great parties, Whigs and Tories. They 
took their rise in the reign of Charles II., 
and English political history since then is 
made up of their struggles for power. 

As we have seen, the quarrel between 
Charles and his Parliament was practically 
a struggle between the Established Church 
and Puritanism. The Cavalier stood for 
the system of religion set up by Elizabeth, 
and, when the Roundhead triumphed, he 
abolished Episcopacy and prohibited the 
use of the Book of Common Prayer. The 
same measure which the Episcopalians 
had meted out to the Catholics, was now 
measured out to- themselves. Between the 
different factions of the Puritans the same 
intolerance reigned. The Presbyterian 
hated the Independent, and the Baptist, 
who now comes into notice, was loved by 
neither. But all, Presbyterian and Bap- 
tist, Congregationalist and Episcopalian, 
hated the Pope. Then was seen the phe- 
nomenon so often repeated even to our 

129 



The Intolerance of Protestant Sects. 

own day. The Protestant sects may wran- 
gle among themselves and may persecute 
one another even to the effusion of blood; 
but once whisper the word Catholic in 
their ears and they forget their differ- 
ences and spring to arms against the 
common enemy. Cromwell, who was the 
leader of the Independents, has left a name 
which is a synonym for bigotry, cruelty 
and hypocrisy. He drenched Ireland with 
Catholic blood, and, even to this day, his 
atrocious deeds are not recalled without a 
shudder. 

When, therefore, Charles II. faced his 
people for the first time, he faced a nation 
tired of civil war, weary of military des- 
potism, yet divided into factions, the one 
intolerant of the other. The Catholics, 
who were few in number, had naturally 
taken the side of the King in the civil war, 
on the principle that of two evils they 
should choose the lesser. The majority of 
the people, disgusted with Puritanism, 
looked with favor on the Established 
Church ; the Puritans, divided into at least 

130 



Puritans Driven From the Establishment. 

three hostile denominations, feared the 
vengeance of their former victims. To 
calm their apprehensions, Charles had, be- 
fore his landing, published a declaration 
in which he promised liberty to tender 
consciences in matters of religion. This 
declaration gave general satisfaction and 
the Catholics began to hope that the night 
of the persecution was passing away and 
that they might be allowed to worship 
their God in peace. 

The first Parliament of Charles II. met 
in 1661. A wave of loyalty had spread 
over the country. The reaction against 
Puritanism was at its height. With the 
exception of a small handful all the mem- 
bers were fanatically devoted to the King 
and to the Established Church. At once 
the Puritans began to feel their vengeance. 
By the corporation act they were excluded 
from municipal office and by the act of 
uniformity they were excluded from the 
Established Church. 

Relying on the promise of the King, 
both the Protestant dissenters and the 

III 



The Court Party and the Country Party. 

Catholics petitioned for relief. ^Tut not 
your trust in princes," is an old and true 
saying. Charles was more solicitous of 
his crown than of his good word. He was 
afraid to cross the intolerant temper of 
his Parliament and the promise of toler- 
ance, like so many other promises, was 
broken almost as soon as made. 

The legislature, which in the beginning 
was so loyal to the King, now began to 
suffer the inevitable reaction. It divided 
into two parties, one in favor of the po- 
litical measures adopted by the court and 
the other opposed to them and to the 
King's ministers. The former or court 
party was known later in the reign as the 
Tory party and the members of the latter 
were nicknamed Whigs. At that time 
France, under the rule of Louis XIV., 
was the most powerful nation in Europe. 
During his exile Charles had lived on 
the charity of the French Court, as his 
mother was of the Roval House of France. 
Naturally, when he came to the throne 
his sympathies turned to the nation which 

132 



Charles II. a Pensioner of France. 

had befriended him. He entered into a 
close alliance with Louis XIV. and sur- 
rendered to him the town of Dunkirk 
for the sum of four hundred thousand 
pounds. The enmity between France and 
England had been of long standing. Dun- 
kirk was the last of the great possessions 
which the English Kings once held on 
the continent. Its sale, therefore, hurt the 
national pride and the country or Whig 
party grew more and more embittered 
against the King and his ministers. 

To strengthen their position the Whigs 
began to raise the cry of ^^No Popery." 
France was a Catholic nation. Charles 
had married a Catholic princess of Por- 
tugal. If they could persuade the country 
that there was an insidious design to ex- 
tirpate the Protestant religion, they could 
even coerce the King. But the Tories 
were able to play that game too. If the 
Whigs were loud in their denunciations 
of Popery, the Tories could be louder. 
If the country party could introduce new 
and more severe measures of repression, 

133 



He Desires to Grant General Toleration. 

the Tories could take those measures, add 
to them and make them their own. Thus 
early in their history began that policy 
which was described in our times by say- 
ing that the Tories found the Whigs in 
bathing and ran away with their clothes. 

Though the promise of tolerance had 
been broken, both the Puritans and the 
Catholics still continued to remind the 
King of his engagement. Charles was a 
man of abandoned morals, and that he had 
any religious sentiments whatsoever is a 
matter of doubt. Nominally he was a 
Protestant; but like so many in his day 
and in our day, the word meant merely an 
indifference to all religious forms. Hence, 
he had no personal animosity against any 
sect or belief, and it is quite probable that 
if he had his way he would have granted 
universal toleration. But universal toler- 
ation was far from the thoughts of the 
people. It was an idea too tender for 
those harsh times. Now, it had been held 
by the crown lawyers that to dispense 
with the operation of penal laws was one 

134 



The Whigs Raise the Cry of No Popery. 

of the prerogatives of the sovereign. To- 
ward the end of 1662, Charles published 
a declaration in which he announced his 
intention to apply to Parliament for an 
act enabling him to "exercise with more 
universal satisfaction the power of dis- 
pensing." He added that he had no doubt 
that the Parliament would support him, as 
he was bound by his solemn promise to 
grant some relief to those who suffered 
for conscience sake. 

The country party saw its opportunity. 
The No-Popery Ghost stalked abroad. It 
was declared that the King had little 
concern for the oppressed Protestants, he 
only wished to relieve the Papists. Ru- 
mors were spread that he was a Catho- 
lic at heart, and that Jesuits and priests 
were making converts all through Eng- 
land. Popery was on the increase and if 
the Protestants of England did not look 
to it they might soon find themselves sub- 
ject to the Pope. 

The court or the Tory party was not 
to be outdone by the Whigs. When Par- 

i3_5 



The Tories' Cry Louder Than the Whigs\ 

liament met, Charles opened it with the 
usual speech, and dished his opponents by 
demanding the enactment of new laws to 
check the progress of Popery. Tories and 
Whigs vied with one another in carrying 
out his recommendation. Even a bill to 
relieve the dissenters or Puritans and mak- 
ing special exception of the "Popish reli- 
gion," was defeated, and both parties pre- 
sented an address to the King asking for 
a proclamation; and the Parliament again 
manifested its devotion to the true and re- 
formed faith by another address, calling 
on the King "to put in execution all the 
penal laws against Catholics, dissenters 
and sectaries of every description.'* 

But this sweeping and sanguinary pro- 
vision did not appease the bigotry of the 
Established Church. Year by year the 
political measures adopted by Charles and 
his ministers kept alive the spirit of hos- 
tility between the country party and the 
court; and both parties, when their policy 
was called in question, took refuge behind 
the No-Popery Ghost. In 1666 London 

136 



The Great Fire of London, 1666. 

was ravaged by a great fire, which de- 
stroyed tw^o thirds of the city. The houses 
were mostly built of wood, the streets were 
narrow, and, as in the great Chicago fire, 
a violent storm spread the flames. But 
those natural causes did not satisfy the 
temper of the time. The opponents of the 
court declared that it was a punishment 
from God on the immorality of the King 
and his ministers; the court party retorted 
that it was a punishment from God on 
the wickedness of the Puritan rebellion. 
Both parties, however, soon found a com- 
mon scapegoat. The fire was the work of 
the Papists. To quote from the words of 
Lecky : 

Panic-stricken by the rapid prog- 
ress of the flames, half-maddened by 
terror and by despair, the people at 
once attributed it to deliberate incen- 
diarism. The Dutch and French 
were the first objects of their suspi- 
cion, but soon after the Papists were 
included, and were dragged in multi- 
tudes to prison. A Portuguese who, 
according to the custom of his coun- 



Ascribed to the Malice of the Papists. 

try, picked up a piece of bread that 
was lying on the ground and placed 
it on the ledge projecting from the 
nearest house, was seized upon the 
charge of throwing fireballs. Among 
the crowd of terrified prisoners was 
a poor Frenchman, whose brain ap- 
pears to have been turned by the terror 
and excitement of the scene, and who 
confessed himself the author of the 
fire. He appears to have been simply 
a monomaniac, and the judges openly 
declared their utter disbelief in his 
disjointed and. unsupported story; but 
in the temper in which men then were, 
he was condemned, and the King did 
not dare to arrest his execution. Nor 
was the panic suffered to pass awaj. 
Although a Parliamentary committee, 
after the strictest inquiry, could find 
nothing whatsoever implicating the 
Catholics (who, indeed, could have 
gained nothing by the crime), it was 
determined in the most solemn and 
authoritative manner, to brand them 
as its perpetrators. The Monument, 
erected in memorial of the Catastro- 
phe in one of the most crowded thor- 
oughfares of London, bore two Latin 

138 



The Monument Commemorating the Fire. 

inscriptions, commemorating the re- 
building of the city, and the Mayors 
by whose care the Monument was 
erected. The third inscription was in 
English, that all might read it, and it 
was to the effect that ^^This pillar was 
set up in perpetual remembrance of 
the most dreadful burning of this an- 
cient city, begun and carried on by 
the treachery and malice of the Pop- 
ish faction, in the beginning of Sep- 
tember in the year of our Lord 1666, 
in order to the carrying on their hor- 
rid plot for extirpating the Protestant 
religion and old English liberty and 
introducing Popery and slavery." In 
the reign of James II. this scandalous 
inscription was taken away, but it was 
restored at the Revolution and was not 
finally removed till 1831. Another 
and very similar inscription was 
placed in Pudding Lane, on the spot 
where the fire began, and remained 
there till the middle of the last cen- 
tury, when it was removed on account 
of the crowds who gathered to read 
it. — Lecky^s England in the Seven- 
teenth Century, Ch. ii. 

When Rome was burned, Nero was able 

139 



It Also Made Popular Opinion. 



to throw the guilt on the Christians. 
When London was burned, the Protestants 
were able to throw the guilt on the Cath- 
olics. For neither charge was there a 
particle of evidence, but the result was in 
both cases persecution. The monument 
stood in the midst of London, the capital 
of the country. To the thousands and 
thousands who passed by, it trumpeted 
forth its lying charge. Generation after 
generation grew up under its shadow, and, 
from its teaching, learned to hate the 
Catholic name. Like the celebration of 
the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot, 
it made popular opinion. Is it any won- 
der that the Protestant tradition should be 
so strongly anti-Catholic? Is it any won- 
der that those, whose youth was fed on 
that tradition, should be ready to believe 
anything, no matter how extraordinary, 
against it? Though the charge was base- 
less, though it was instigated by sordid 
motives of political gain, though the edu- 
cated must have known its untruth — what 
did the people know? Their teachers 

140 



And Helped to Preserve Protestantism. 

were the effigies of Guy Fawkes and the 
monument of the great fire. Those were 
the Ghosts which haunted their dreams. 
Those were the preservatives of Protes- 
tantism in that land — 

Where London's column pointing to 

the skies, 
Like a tall bully, lifts its head and 

lies. 

But there is worse to come. Since 
Charles' accession his chief minister had 
been Sir Edward Hyde, afterwards Earl 
of Clarendon. Like all men who hold 
power for any length of time, he had many 
enemies. For years they strove against 
him and at last they accomplished his 
downfall. The brother of the King was 
James, Duke of York. As Charles had no 
legitimate issue, James was the heir pre- 
sumptive to the throne. He had married 
Hyde's daughter, and the statesmen who 
had accomplished the chief minister's 
downfall feared the vengeance of the 
Duke. They had come into power the 
year after the great fire, and their constant 

141 



The Conversion of James, Duke of York. 

endeavor thenceforward was to exclude 
James from the crown. 

In 1668 James gave them an oppor- 
tunity which they were not slow to use. 
He was converted to the Catholic Church. 
He knew the danger to which this change 
of creed would expose him and he hoped 
to be permitted to attend the service of the 
Established Church in public, while he 
was privately in communion with the 
Catholic Church. To his surprise he 
learned that such double-dealing would 
be a sin against God's law, and to his 
credit, be it said, he took his resolution 
at once. He avowed himself a Catholic 
and w^as ready to stand the consequences. 

It would be too tedious to follow the 
crooked politics of the times and to trace 
the various measures by which the oppo- 
nents of James worked their will. Suf- 
fice to say that in 1672 the country was at 
war w^ith Holland, and the savage laws 
against the dissenters kept the nation in 
turmoil. Charles resolved to use his dis- 
pensing power and published a declara- 

142 



The Enactment of the Test Oath. 

tion suspending the operation of the penal 
laws in the case of dissenters. When Par- 
liament met in the following year the No- 
Popery cry was raised. Charles was com- 
pelled to withdraw the declaration. The 
opponents of the Duke of York now urged 
on the war against him. A law was 
passed known as the Test Act, by which 
all persons holding any public office un- 
der the crown, were compelled to receive 
the sacrament of the Church of England, 
and to abjure the doctrine of Transub- 
stantiation. The result was that the Duke 
of York resigned his position as Lord 
High Admiral, and was practically re- 
tired to private life. 

Soon after this the King quarreled 
with his ministers. The ablest of them 
and the most unscrupulous, was the Earl 
of Shaftesburv. His character is so black 
that it is hard to believe that human na- 
ture could be so vile. Yet as Macaulay 
says: "The charges against him rest on 
evidence not to be invalidated by any ar- 
guments which human wit can devise. 

143 



Shaftesbury Exploits No-Popery. 

When Shaftesbury was dismissed he 
threw himself with all his energy into the 
party opposed to the court. As usual, the 
weapon employed was the No-Popery cry. 
He began to fan the panic by tales of a 
Papist rising in London, and of a coming 
Irish revolt with a French army to back 
it. He declared that he had earned the 
special hatred of the Catholics and that 
his life was in danger. They had formed 
a conspiracy, he said, to cut his throat, and 
to put himself in security he took lodg- 
ings in London with a Baptist preacher, 
and announced to the citizens that he 
trusted for his safety to their vigilance 
and fidelity. When Parliament opened 
Shaftesbury had organized the country 
party, and measure after measure was in- 
troduced, aiming at the exclusion of the 
Duke of York from the crown. Those 
measures were defeated by the proroguing 
of Parliament, but the public was ex- 
cited and alarmed by the charges and 
counter-charges that had been made. 

Shaftesbury's zeal had been directed 

144 



The Tories Meet Him On His Own Ground. 

against the court party, and the success of 
the country party was owing to the dex- 
terity with which he employed the cry of 
No Popery. Charles resolved to meet him 
on his own ground and with his own 
weapons. He made Danby his chief min- 
ister, and in a short time Danby out- 
heroded Herod. A proclamation speedily 
appeared again banishing priests, provid- 
ing pains and penalties for such as should 
attend Mass and forbidding Papists to 
come near the royal court. But Shaftesbury 
was not to be put down by such measures. 
*Xet the Treasurer cry as loud as he 
pleases against Popery," he said, *'I will 
cry a note louder." He was as good as 
his word; to his account must be laid the 
torrents of innocent blood which were 
soon to be shed. 

For eighteen years, the bugbear of 
Popery had been used by politicians. 
Parliament never met without deploring 
its increase and demanding new laws 
against it. Unpopular ministers strove to 
save their credit by denouncing it; popu- 

145 



Result of Constant No-Popery Cry. 

lar ministers strengthened their credit by 
posing as its opponents. No one knew bet- 
ter than those politicians that their fears 
were groundless and their demands with- 
out cause. But because they knew that 
Catholics were few and far between, and 
that Protestants were many and bigoted, 
they were the more ready to play on the 
popular credulity. You may imagine 
what the result must have been. The 
frightened people saw Jesuits in every 
corner and priests lurking behind every 
door. The great fire of London had been 
attributed solemnly to the followers of 
the Pope, and the fiendish cruelty which 
could have been guilty of such an act 
would be guilty of any act. When Shaftes- 
bury, therefore, ^^cried a note louder,'^ 
he found ears already expectant and at- 
tuned to the cry. 

In the August of 1678, tidings of a ter- 
rible plot were spread through England. 
The author was one Titus Oates. He 
was the son of a ribbon weaver, and dur- 
ing the government of Cromwell had offi- 

146 



The Career of the Notorious Titus Oates. 

ciated as a Baptist preacher. After the 
Restoration he became a clergyman in the 
Episcopalian Church and had filled sev- 
eral clerical positions. From all of them 
he had been driven by his misconduct, 
and report accused him of the most in- 
famous crimes. At last, reduced to a con- 
dition of extreme destitution, he applied 
for assistance to an Anglican rector in 
London named Dr. Tonge. This gentle- 
man had Popery on the brain, and every 
quarter he issued a publication v^arning 
the country against the Jesuits. As, how- 
ever, he had nothing but general charges 
to go upon, he considered that it would be 
a good scheme to send a spy into the 
enemy's country. Accordingly, it was ar- 
ranged that Gates should feign himself 
a convert to Catholicism and should ask 
for admission into the Jesuit Order. He 
went to the college of the Jesuits at Val- 
ladolid, in Spain, in 1677, but his habits 
were so bad that, after a trial of five 
months, he was expelled. He returned 
to his patron, Tonge, and they decided that 

147 



The Plot Is Declared to Charles 11. 

as he had been so unsuccessful in Spain, 
he might try St. Omer. Here he was re- 
ceived for a while, but his infamous char- 
acter was soon apparent and he was again 
expelled. He came back to Tonge in 
1678, and between them they decided that 
as real secrets could not be discovered, 
a fictitious plot would serve as well. 

Having arranged their plan of cam- 
paign they took a man named Kirkby 
into their confidence and explained to 
him the details of a portentous plot which 
was being matured by the Papists. On 
the 13th of August Kirkby approached 
Charles as he was walking in the Park, 
and begged of him not to separate him- 
self from the company because his life 
was in danger. This alarming intelli- 
gence led to an interview in the afternoon 
with Dr. Tonge. The doctor explained 
that a narrative of a plot had been left 
under his door by some person unknown, 
but that he thought he had a clue by 
which he could discover his informant. 
The King did not seem to be seriously 

148 



The Jesuits Were to Seize England. 

alarmed, and in September, Oates went 
before a well known magistrate, Sir Ed- 
mondbury Godfrey, and made affidavit 
as to the truth of his disclosures. In the 
same m_onth Oates was called before the 
Privy Council, and there he detailed the 
following marvellous narrative. 

He said that he had been received into 
the Jesuit order and had so far won the 
confidence of his superiors that he was 
intrusted with the most delicate and im- 
portant missions. From the letters which 
he had read and from their confidences re- 
posed in him he had learned the details 
of a plot which was being concocted. The 
Pope had entrusted the government of 
England to the Jesuits and they had de- 
termined to restore the Catholic religion 
by bloodshed and rebellion. Their plan 
of operations comprised Ireland and Scot- 
land. In the former country they were 
organizing a great massacre of Protestants, 
and in the latter they were disguised as 
Presbyterian ministers and were preaching 
rebellion against Episcopacy. They were 

149 



All Protestants to Be Massacred. 

in no want of moneyj but on the contrary- 
had immense sums at their disposal. In 
England they had appointed Catholics to 
the chief offices of the State and Church. 
In 1666 they had burned down London 
and they were now planning to set fire 
to the shipping in the Thames. At a given 
signal all the Catholics were to rise and 
massacre their Protestant neighbors. All 
the leading statesmen and divines were 
to be murdered. Various schemes were 
formed to kill the King. At a grand meet- 
ing of the Jesuits, held in April in Lon- 
don, three sets of assassins had been pro- 
vided, two Jesuit lay brothers, two Ben- 
edictine monks and four Irishmen, cap- 
tained by a man named Fogarty. If 
James would not consent to his brother's 
death, he too should be killed. More- 
over, the Pope had issued a Bull, ap- 
pointing certain individuals to the digni- 
ties of the Church of England, because 
he believed that on the death of the King 
the Catholic religion would rise to its 
former ascendancy. 

150 



Coleman's Letters Used as Evidence. 

The plot might have died here were 
it not for the work of the politicians dur- 
ing the past eighteen years. They had 
prepared the public mind for treasons, 
stratagems, spoils, and here indeed were 
horrors beyond the disordered imagina- 
tion of a madman. In fact, the more 
diabolical the contrivance appeared the 
better it fitted in with the popular idea of 
the Jesuits. The politicians at once took 
it up. Shaftesbury made it his own. Two 
events which then happened were dex- 
terously turned to strengthen the popular 
delusion and were interpreted as corrob- 
orative of Oates' narrative. 

Among those accused by Oates as being 
privy to the plot, was one Coleman, who 
had been secretary to the Duchess of 
York. His papers were seized, and 
among them were found several letters 
which he had written to friends in France. 
He was a convert from Protestantism, and 
certain expressions in his correspondence 
bore on the growing hopes of Catholics. 
The sentiments of Charles were supposed 

151 



Death of Sir Edmondbury Godfrey. 

to be favorable to Catholicism; James, 
the heir presumptive, was a convert, and 
Coleman, like many an enthusiast since, 
spoke confidently about the conversion of 
his native land. Immediately this lan- 
guage was seized upon as a proof of the 
plot. The conversion of England could 
be nothing else than the conversion by 
murder and massacre which the Jesuits 
had planned. The letters won credit for 
the perjuries of Oates, which credit was 
changed into certainty when the news 
ran through the frenzied populace that 
Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, the magistrate 
before whom Oates had made his depo- 
sition, was found dead in a field near 
London, with a sword driven through his 
heart. 

At once the word went forth that it was 
the work of the Jesuits. They were try- 
ing to stifle the plot. Godfrey was known 
to be a friend of the Catholics; in fact, 
he was on terms of intimacy with Cole- 
man, and when Oates made his deposition 
implicating Coleman, he had given the ac- 

152 



Papists Accused of Murdering Him. 

cused the first warning of the charge. 
What motive the Catholics could have in 
assassinating him does not appear. His 
father had committed suicide, and the at- 
titude in which he was found was evi- 
dence that the wound was self-inflicted. 
But suicide it was not to be ; the coroner's 
jury returned the verdict that he was 
murdered by the Papists, and the whole 
city looked upon him as the first martyr 
in the Protestant cause. 

Then from the Protestant pulpits rose 
the cry of vengeance. The chief among 
the clergy, men such as Sancroft, Burnet, 
Tillitson, Stillingfleet, declared the reality 
of the plot and called for the severest 
laws against Catholics. Godfrey's body 
was brought into the city and laid in state 
in his own house. The populace were 
invited to view the mangled remains of 
the Protestant martyr. The sight drove 
them. mad. A general massacre, the burn- 
ing of the city, the blowing up of the 
royal palace, were hourly expected. Af- 
ter ten days a public funeral brought the 

153 



Spectacular Funeral Stirs the City. 

excitement to a climax. Seventy-two cler- 
gymen walked before the corpse and more 
than a thousand gentlemen in mourning 
followed. The whole city turned out. 
The preacher who delivered the sermon 
appeared in the pulpit between two big 
brawny men to protect him against the 
designs of the Papists. The sermon 
proved conclusively that Godfrey fell a 
victim to the • Jesuits because of his at- 
tachment to the Protestant religion, and 
the people swore over his grave to bring 
the murderers to justice. 

In the meantime Parliament met and 
immediately began to investigate the plot. 
Shaftesbury was the leader in the inves- 
tigations. All his former charges were 
now verified. It is certain he knew the 
plot was a fraud; it is certain he knew 
that because of it innocent blood would 
be shed like water; but truth and justice 
and humanity were nothing to him in his 
greed for power. Gates and Tonge were 
called before the two houses and the 
members listened in horror and astonish- 

154 



Parliament Adds to the Excitement. 

ment to their blood-curdling tales — tales 
which daily grew more bloody. Resolu- 
tions were passed, placing guards in the 
cellars under the House of Parliament, 
lest the Jesuits might attempt a second 
Gunpowder Plot, and conjuring Charles 
to have his meals prepared by none but 
orthodox cooks. Five Catholic peers were 
sent to the Tower and two thousand Cath- 
olics thrown into prison. A proclamation 
ordered that all Catholics should at once 
depart the city. London soon had the 
aspect of a town besieged. The militia 
remained all night under arms. Materials 
were collected to barricade the great thor- 
oughfares, cannons were planted, patrols 
marched and no citizen dared to venture 
from his house unless he were armed with 
what was known as the "Protestant flail,'' 
a small flail loaded with lead, to brain 
the Popish assassins. Shaftesbury forced 
a bill through the legislature which ex- 
cluded all Catholics from a seat in Par- 
liament. The exclusion remained good 
for a century and a half. It was no use 

I5S 



Titus Oates the Hero of the Hour. 

that some in authority attempted to cast 
doubt on the reality of the plot. Parlia- 
ment silenced all cavil by passing a joint 
resolution that ^^there had been, and still 
was, a damnable and hellish plot, con- 
trived and carried on by the Popish re- 
cusants, for the assassinating and murder- 
ing the King, and for subverting the 
government and destroying the Protestant 
religion." 

Oates was now the hero of the hour. He 
was applauded by every one and called 
the savior of the nation. Parliament rec- 
ommended him to the King, he was 
lodged in the palace, protected by guards 
and given a pension of $6,000 a year. "In 
a few weeks he had been raised from 
penury and obscurity to opulence, to 
power, which made him the dread of 
princes and nobles, and to notoriety such 
as has for low and bad minds all the at- 
tractions of glory." Up to this his tale 
had stood on his bare word. No one had 
come forward to substantiate his charges 
against the many whom he had accused. 

156 



Other Informers Make Their Appearance. 

By the law at least two witnesses were 
necessary to establish a charge of treason. 
But the success of Gates had its natural 
consequences. Informers began to spring 
up on all sides; the slums of London dis- 
gorged a multitude of false witnesses ready 
to swear away the lives of Catholics. One 
William Bedloe, who had been a stable 
boy in the household of a Catholic peer, 
came forward as a candidate for a reward 
of $2,500, offered for the discovery of 
Godfrey's murderers. His memory im- 
proved with practice, and he soon dis- 
covered that he knew a multitude of Jesu- 
its, priests, popes, monks, nuns, friars, who 
were all working in the great Popish plot. 
An army of 10,000 men was to land in 
Yorkshire, another army of 30,000 friars 
and pilgrims was to sail from Spain, 
40,000 armed cut-throats were secretly or- 
ganized in the kingdom, and at a given 
time were to massacre the Protestants, 
and there was not a Catholic in England 
of quality or credit, who had not re- 
ceived information of the plot and been 

157 



The Queen Herself Accused. 



sworn on the Sacrament, to lend it his aid 
and keep it secret. 

Oates was not to be outdone by Bedloe 
and he appeared before the King with 
another tale. He had seen a letter in 
which the Queen's physician had stated 
that she had given her consent to the 
King's death. Himself had overheard 
her utter the same sentiments. Bedloe if 
he could not surpass this story corrobo- 
rated it. He too had heard the queen agree 
to the killing of Charles. He actually 
delivered his deposition in writing at the 
bar of the House of Commons, and Oates 
followed with the charge: ^^I, Titus 
Oates, accuse Catherine, Queen of Eng- 
land, of high treason." 

A dispute between the two houses put 
an end to this extraordinary charge, but 
the courts of the realm were busy with 
the rest of the accused. To read the rec- 
ords of that time is like reading the re- 
cords of pandemonium. The judges, the 
juries, the populace were leagued by hate 
and terror against the supposed traitors. 

158 



Victims Hurried to the Scaffold. 

The informers swore to the most improb- 
able tales, contradicted one another and 
themselves, but the judges overlooked their 
manifest perjury, the juries required no 
more evidence against a man once they 
found he was a Catholic, and if any wit- 
nesses dared to appear in favor of the ac- 
cused, the populace nearly tore them to 
pieces. 

The first victim was Coleman. Oates 
and Bedloe swore that he was implicated 
in the plot, though it was conclusively 
shown that they had never seen him be- 
fore. He went to the scaffold in Decem- 
ber, 1678, protesting his innocence. 

Stayley, a Catholic banker, was accused 
by one Carstairs, a Scotch adventurer, of 
high treason. Burnet, one of the London 
preachers, knew Carstairs, and knew him 
to be a scoundrel of the deepest dye. He 
went to the Lord Chancellor and told him 
that the informer was unworthy of credit; 
but Jones, the attorney-general, was present, 
and turning fiercely on him, demanded 
why he dared defame the King's wit- 

159 



Duke of York Leaves the Kingdom. 

ness? Burnet shrank from the frown of 
power, and left the unfortunate Catholic 
to his fate. Stayley was found guilty and 
suffered the death of a traitor. 

Three Jesuits, Ireland, Grove and Pick- 
ering, were next tried. Gates and Bedloe 
swore against them, and, of course, they 
were found guilty and died on the scaf- 
fold, protesting their innocence. 

Next, three servants of the Queen, two 
Catholics and one Protestant, were put 
on trial for the murder of Godfrey. The 
evidence given against them was full of 
the most glaring inconsistencies, yet the 
jury found a verdict against them and the 
three were put to death. 

The old Parliament w^as dissolved dur- 
ing the excitement of the plot and the new 
Parliament met, breathing slaughter against 
Popery. So terrible was the excitement 
that the Duke of York withdrew to Bel- 
gium in March, 1679, the month the legis- 
lature assembled. Informers and arrests 
were multiplied, and the jails were filled 
with the victims of perjury. Both houses 

160 



Attempts to Exclude Him From Throne. 

again declared that there ^^had existed and 
did exist a horrid and treasonable con- 
spiracy contrived by those of the Popish 
religion for the murdering of the King, 
the subverting of Protestantism, and the 
ruin of the ancient government of the 
kingdom." Following the example of the 
contrivers of the Gunpowder Plot this note 
was prefixed to the form of public prayer 
appointed to be read on the day of the 
national fast. Articles of impeachment 
were drawn up against the Catholic Lords 
in which they were charged that '4n union 
with Cardinal Howard, the Provincial of 
the Jesuits, and a number of persons, they 
had conspired to imprison, depose and 
murder the King, and reduce the king- 
dom under the tyranny of the Pope." This 
was followed by the introduction of a 
bill excluding the duke from the throne 
on the ground of his religion. The bill 
failed in the Lords by a narrow vote and 
Parliament was prorogued. But the trials 
still went on. Five Jesuit Fathers — Whit- 
bread, Fenwick, Harcourt, Gavan and 

i6i 



Judges and Juries Hurry on Convictions. 

Turner were placed at the bar on June 13, 
1679, to answer for their share in the plot. 
Oates, Bedloe and a whole host of in- 
formers appeared against them, the chief 
justice delivered his charge with his usual 
partiality and the jury without hesitation 
returned a verdict of guilty. 

The following day Langhorne, a Catho- 
lic lawyer who had acted as business man 
for the English Jesuits, was put on trial. 
He was a good lawyer and there was con- 
siderable fear among the defenders of the 
Protestant faith that he might get off. 
Up to his trial he had been kept in soli- 
tary confinement; the moment he appeared 
the crowd received him with jeers and 
hisses, his witnesses were abused and beat- 
en, his objections to the evidence of the 
informers were overruled by the court, 
and when the jury brought in the usual 
verdict of guilty, the hall rang with cheers. 

Still the mob was not satisfied. The 
persecution spread through the kingdom. 
Proclamations stared from the walls, of- 
fering ten pounds reward for the discovery 

162 



The Fury Spreads Through Kingdom. 

of any Papist within the royal residence, 
fifty pounds for the discovery of any 
money or land belonging to priests. The 
fines of twenty pounds a month for ab- 
sence from the Protestant church were re- 
inforced, and twenty-four priests were sen- 
tenced to death. They were brought to 
London and interrogated by Shaftesbury 
as to their connection with the plot. Not 
one admitted any knowledge of it, not 
one could be seduced to turn informer. 
The delay did not please the House of 
Commons. The members called aloud for 
the priests^ blood. They were sent back 
to their former prisons. Some v/ere re- 
prieved for a time, and others executed at 
various parts of the kingdom, among them 
two who had passed their eightieth year. 
But the reaction was now beginning. At 
the trial of the Queen's physician, the in- 
formers perjured themselves so flagrantly 
that the prosecution broke down. People 
began to ask themselves, after a year of 
delirium, could such things be true? 
Shaftesbury saw the trend of public opin- 

163 



Shaftesbury Fans the Flames. 

ion. The measure for which he had 
worked and planned was still unaccom- 
plished. James was not excluded from 
the crown. It was necessary to revive in- 
terest in the plot. He therefore planned 
a great demonstration in London to rouse 
the people. On the seventeenth of No- 
vember, 1679, the anniversary of the ac- 
cession of Queen Elizabeth, an immense 
procession was formed. First came a 
bell-man, walking slowly and exclaiming 
solemnly: ^^Remember Mr. Justice God- 
frey." Next came a man, dressed as a 
Jesuit, bearing a dead body. Then fol- 
lowed nuns, monks, priests, bishops, car- 
dinals and, last of all, the Pope, with his 
arch-counsellor, the devil. The parade 
marched through the streets of London bv 
torchlight, and was viewed by 200,000 per- 
sons, who swore eternal hatred to Popery 
and called for vengeance on the Papists. 
At Temple Bar the Pope and his at- 
tendants were burned, to the delight of the 
multitude, who were thus wonderfully 
comforted, convinced of the truth of the 

164 



New Victims Are Sacrificed. 



plot, and strengthened in the principles 
of the Protestant religion. 

It is no wonder therefore that new plots 
were being discovered every day; some 
were in London, some were in Yorkshire. 
Men manifestly innocent were hanged on 
the testimony of the most infamous 
wretches. James, who had returned to 
the kingdom was prosecuted as a Catholic, 
and when the Parliament met in 1680 an 
informer named Dangerfield appeared be- 
fore the house and accused the Duke of 
York of instigating him to the murder of 
the King. He was followed by a troop 
of new witnesses who testified that a new 
plot was being hatched to murder Oates, 
Bedloe, Shaftesbury and all who had ex- 
posed the old one. The excitement was 
renewed. The exclusion bill passed the 
Commons but was defeated in the Lords. 
In revenge the promoters of the plot 
brought up the impeachment of the Cath- 
olic peers. They were afraid to attack all 
at once so they selected Lord Stafford, the 
oldest and the most helpless. He was ad- 

165 



The Ven. Oliver Plunket the Last Martyr. 

judged guilty on the same perjured tes- 
timony and he went to the scaffold forgiv- 
ing his enemies. He was the last English 
victim of the plot. The last victim was an 
Irishman, Oliver Plunket, Archbishop of 
Armagh. He was accused of managing 
the Irish department of the plot. He was 
brought over to England, deprived of wit- 
nesses, and condemned, simply because of 
his religion. On the first of July, 1681, 
he was hanged at Tyburn. Before he was 
dead the hangman cut him down, tore 
him open, and burned his bowels before 
his face. 

This was the last effort of those who 
were interested in sustaining the vitality 
of the plot. Political events moved rap- 
idly, Shaftesbury fell from power and 
fled. The Tory party rallied round the 
King. There was no longer any political 
capital to be made by pushing the No- 
Popery cry further for a time. Oates 
was convicted of libel and thrown into 
prison. In the reign of James 11. he was 
tried for perjury, condemned and sen- 

166 



The Reaction! Shaftesbury Flies. 

tenced to be whipped from Tyburn to 
Newgate and from Newgate to Tyburn, 
and to be imprisoned during the rest of 
his natural life. When the new anti- 
popery cry brought in William of Or- 
ange, in 1689, Oates was set free and 
given a small pension. He officiated as a 
Baptist preacher for some time and died 
in obscurity, in 1705. 

Such is a brief and inadequate account 
of the great Popish plot. It is a sad and 
disgraceful story. The plot grew out of 
religious hatred dexterously excited by 
politicians and dexterously played on by 
impostors. The plot passed away, and 
men of sense knew from the beginning to 
the end, it was a diabolical fraud. Not 
so the people. Their fears, it is true, 
passed away, but they imagined they had 
been saved by their own vigilance. They 
believed the "Tall Bully" which told them 
that the Papists had burned the city; they 
honored Titus Oates who had saved it 
from being burned again. Thus the second 
Ghost continued the work of the first, and 

167 



The Effects of Plot on Catholics. 

Gunpowder Plot and Popish Plot became 
the two buttresses of British Protestantism. 



1 68 



IV -THE GORDON RIOTS. 

IT is an article of faith among our sep- 
arated brethren that the Protestant 
Reformation marks the beginning of 
modern liberty, religious and civil. We 
are told that before the time of Martin 
Luther the whole world was delivered over 
to ignorance, superstition and slavery. On 
every occasion the preachers insist on the 
belief that all the freedom we now enjoy 
comes to us from the religious revolution 
of the sixteenth centurv. Then the Bible 
was opened. Then the human intellect 
came out of its dark prison house. Then 
faith was made free. Then conscience 
was emancipated. Then was the first im- 
petus given to that movement of progress, 
which for three centuries and more has 
been carrying the human race onward and 
upward. These sentiments are re-echoed 
in the newspapers; are set down as in- 
contestable facts in our text books, and 

169 



Protestant Claims to Progress and Liberty. 

are embodied in our very methods of 
speech. A reformation is the amendment 
or bettering of what has become corrupt; 
therefore, the revolt of Luther against 
Rome must be the Reformation. The 
Catholic Church was the patron of ig- 
norance; therefore the Middle Ages, which 
were the ages of faith, must be called the 
Dark Ages, and if anything strikes us as 
superstitious, narrow or reactionary, we 
brand it as mediaeval. That Protestantism 
means progress and light and liberty, is 
to the generality of non-Catholics what 
to the Mahometans is the war cry, ^There 
is no God but God, and Mahomet is His 
prophet." 

We have, during the past lectures, been 
trying this opinion by historical facts. We 
have seen that Protestantism was intro- 
duced into England as a political measure. 
We have seen that it has been perpetuated 
by cruelty and fraud. From the very be- 
ginning it has been not only bolstered 
up by the influence of a government, but, 
also, it has been forced upon a people by 

170 



Belied By Long Record of Persecutions. 

fines, imprisonment and death. Any doc- 
trine or opinion, religious or other, should 
be able to make its own way. The 
human intellect is the supreme judge of 
reasoning, and any opinion, which is 
afraid of reason, is not fit to live. Left 
to itself, it will take refuge among the ig- 
norant, or die out altogether. Faith should 
be free. A faith which cannot commend 
itself to human judgments, is not intended 
for human hearts. Protestantism, if we 
are to^'judge it by its words, stands on this 
platform. It has delivered humanity, say 
its admirers, from the tyranny of Church 
and priest, and it sets its devotee face to 
face with God to hear with his own ears 
whatsoever the Lord may speak. As a 
matter of fact, Protestantism has never 
dared to live up to its professions. It has 
never dared to allow those whom it could 
influence, to consider the question of reli- 
gion with unbiased mind. I have recounted 
for you, and I have still to recount, a 
long and hateful series of laws by which 
men were forced into Protestantism un- 

171 



English Protestantism Rooted in Fraud. 

der the penalty of beggary, of exile, of 
perpetual imprisonment, of death. By 
those methods was the Protestant army re- 
cruited. By those methods was religion 
^^reformed." By those methods were the 
slaves of Rome dragooned into freedom. 
O blessed apostles of the new and the 
pure religion, the Rack, the Dungeon and 
the Block! 

No opinion is worth following which is 
supported by prejudice and untruth. 
When two opinions clash, that one which 
takes refuge in misrepresentation, in slan- 
der, in fraud is evidently conscious of its 
own weakness. The lectures which have 
been already delivered prove at whose 
door must be laid the charge of false- 
witness. By a series of gigantic impositions 
the people of England were persuaded 
that Popery meant treason, meant cru- 
elty, meant slavery. They were grounded 
and rooted in Protestantism by forgery 
and fraud. The Gunpowder Plot, the 
Fire of London, the Titus Gates Plot 
were all used to bring the Catholic re- 

172 



Because It Cannot Stand Test of Truth. 

ligion into hatred and contempt. Is there 
anyone living now who will say that those 
events gave any foundation for the vast 
structure of calumny erected on them? 
Is there anyone now who will not ac- 
knowledge that unprincipled men by 
those unholy means blinded the eyes of 
the people, and closed their ears and 
hardened their hearts against the Catho- 
lic Church? Yet those men knew the 
strength and weakness of Protestantism. 
They knew the strength and weakness of 
the English people. They knew the 
strength and weakness of Catholicism. 
If, therefore, they could not afford to com- 
bat us by argument; if they were com- 
pelled to introduce their creed by force; 
if they made its permanence secure by 
prejudice they thereby confess that their 
creed cannot stand the test of argument, 
in a free field and before an unprejudiced 
people. 

No conclusion is trustworthy which 
has not been tried by enemy as well 
as friend; no traditions have a claim 

173 



Afraid of Comparison With the Church. 

upon us which shrink from criticism 
and dare not look a rival in the face. 
Now this is precisely the weak point 
of Protestantism in this country. It 
is jealous of being questioned; it re- 
sents argument; it flies to State pro- 
tection; it is afraid of the sun; it for- 
bids competition. How can you de- 
tect the sham, but by comparing it 
with the true? Your artificial flow- 
ers have the softness and brilliancy 
of nature, till you bring in the living 
article, fresh from the garden; you 
detect the counterfeit coin by ringing 
it with the genuine. So is it in reli- 
gion. Protestantism is at best but a 
fine piece of wax-work, which does 
not look dead, only because it is not 
confronted by that Church which 
really breathes and lives. The living 
Church is the test and the confuta- 
tion of all false churches; therefore 
get rid of her at all hazards; tread 
her down, gag her, dress her like a 
felon, starve her, bruise her features, 
if you would keep up your mumbo- 
jumbo in its place of pride. By no 
manner of means give her fair play; 
you dare not. The dazzling bright- 

174 



Which It Designedly Misrepresents. 

ness of her glance, the sanctity beam- 
ing from her countenance, the melody 
of her voice, the grace of her move- 
ments will be too much for you. 
Blacken her, make her Cinderella in 
the ashes; do not hear a word she 
says. Do not look on her, but daub 
her in your own way; keep up the 
good old sign-post representation of 
her. Let her be a lion-rampant, a 
griffin, a wivern, or a salamander. 
She shall be red or black; she shall 
be always absurd, always imbecile, 
always malicious, always tyrannical. 
The lion shall not draw the lion, 
but the man shall draw him. She 
shall always be worsted in the war- 
fare with Protestantism; ever un- 
horsed and disarmed, ever running 
away, ever prostrated, ever smashed 
and pounded, ever dying, ever dead ; 
and the only wonder is that she has 
to be killed so often, and the life so 
often to be trodden out of her, and 
her priests and doctors to be so often 
put down, and her monks and nuns 
to be exposed so often, and such vast 
sums to be subscribed by Protestants, 
and such great societies to be kept 

175 



The Accession of James IL to the Throne. 

Up, and such millions of tracts to be 
written, and such persecuting Acts to 
be passed by Parliament, in order 
thoroughly, and once for all, and for 
the very last time, and for ever and 
ever, to annihilate her once more. — 
Newman, Present Position of Cath- 
olics , I, 7. 

In 1685, Charles II. died, and was suc- 
ceeded by his brother, James IL James 
was a Catholic, and naturally he wished 
to obtain toleration for himself and his 
coreligionists. But this was more than 
the Protestants of England could stand. 
They had not excluded him from the 
succession because he was growing old, 
and his heir, Mary, was a Protestant. He 
would be, at most, in power for a few 
years. But when they found that his wife 
had borne him a son, and that he openly 
avowed his intention to secure liberty of 
conscience to all men forever, they forgot 
all their theories about loyalty and invited 
a foreign prince, at the head of a foreign 
army, to destroy their own government. 

176 



Deposed By the Protestant Factions. 

James was deserted by his own daughters, 
whose Protestant ambition prevailed 
against the ties of nature; the crown was 
given to William of Orange and his wife, 
Mary, and thus England was saved once 
more from Popery and slavery. 

It is a very instructive fact that Prot- 
estant preachers find that the country is in 
danger from Catholics because Catholics 
owe allegiance, as they claim, to a foreign 
power. This argument was used against 
the Church in the days of Henry VIII., 
in the days of Elizabeth, and is used in 
our day. It is an argument, which ap- 
peals to our patriotism because our first 
duty in civil affairs is to our own gov- 
ernment. It is our privilege to lay down 
our lives for the integrity of the father- 
land, and, if we wish to change the gov- 
ernment, that change should be made by 
our own hands. 

Yet, wherever Protestantism found that 
its power to persecute Catholicism was 
passing away, it never scrupled to call in 
foreign aid. In France the Huguenots 

177 



New Penal Laws Under William. 

delivered over their fortresses to England, 
the hereditary enemy of their country. 
In England the Puritans accomplished 
one revolution by importing an army from 
Scotland; they accomplished a second rev- 
olution by importing an army from Hol- 
land, and they perpetuated that revolu- 
tion by importing a king from Germany, 
The Protestant party has had one fixed 
idea, and that is to keep the Catholic 
Church under. To accomplish that pur- 
pose, no domestic treason has been too 
cruel, no civil treason too black. To 
keep Protestants in power, the daughter 
was willing to sell her father and the pol- 
iticians were ready to betray their native 
land. 

The triumph of Protestantism by the ac- 
cession of William of Orange, was marked 
by a new outbreak of persecution. In 
addition to the ancient laws, new acts 
were passed for the purpose of ending 
Catholicism once and forever. The say- 
ing of Mass was made an offense pun- 
ishable by perpetual imprisonment. The 

178 



Continued Under Succeeding Sovereigns. 

same penalty was provided for a Catho- 
lic who should teach school. The informer^ 
who should convict a priest of saying 
Mass, received a reward of one hundred 
pounds. An equal amount was given to 
the informer who should convict any per- 
son of sending a child beyond the sea to 
be educated in Papacy. Every Catholic 
forfeited his estate to his nearest Protes- 
tant relative, and, moreover, he was dis- 
abled by the same law from purchasing 
lands in the kingdom or of making profit 
out of the same. 

The reigns of Anne and of George I., 
George II. and George III. added new 
enactments. Those laws were designed 
to make it impossible for a Catholic to 
escape the persecution, and, as late as 1760, 
a new penal statute subjected them to a 
double assessment of the land tax. 

In order to explain the wonderful vi- 
tality of a creed which was able to survive 
so cruel a trial, it has been said that the 
laws were not enforced. But this state- 
ment is not true. The pecuniary rewards 

179 



Enforced Both Against Clergy and Laity. 

promised to informers stimulated their 
vigilance and a long series of persecutions, 
whose records are found in the English 
courts, show that the zeal against Popery 
never slept. 

Speaking in 1780 at Bristol upon the 
subject of the penal laws introduced in 
the reign of William of Orange, Edmund 
Burke said: 

From that time every person of the 
Catholic communion, lay and eccle- 
siastic, has been obliged to fly from 
the face of day. The clergy, concealed 
in garrets of private houses, or 
obliged to take a shelter under the 
privileges of foreign ministers, offi- 
ciated as their servants, and under 
their protection. The whole body of 
the Catholics, condemned to beggary 
and to ignorance in their native land, 
have been obliged to learn the princi- 
ples of letters, at the hazard of all 
their other principles, from the char- 
ity of your enemies. They have been 
taxed to their ruin at the pleasure of 
necessitous and profligate relations, 
and according to . their measure and 

180 



Edmund Burke^s Testimony. 



profligacy. Examples of this are 
many and affecting. Some of them 
are known by a friend, who stands 
near me in this hall. It is but six or 
seven years since a clergyman of the 
name of Malony, a man of morals, 
neither guilty nor accused of anything 
noxious to the State, was condemned 
to perpetual imprisonment for exercis- 
ing the functions of his religion; and, 
after lying in jail two or three years, 
was relieved, by the mercy of gov- 
ernment, from perpetual imprison- 
ment on condition of perpetual ban- 
ishment. 

A brother of the Earl of Shrews- 
bury, a Talbot, a name respectable in 
this country, whilst its glory is any part 
of its concern, was hauled to the bar 
of Old Bailey, among common felons, 
and only escaped the same doom, 
either by some error in the process, 
or that the wretch, who brought him 
there, could not correctly describe his 
person; I now forget which. In 
short, the persecution would never 
have relented for a moment if the 
judges, superseding the strict rule of 
their artificial duty by the higher 

i8i 



Great Change in English Opinion. 

obligation of their conscience, did not 
constantly throw every difficulty in 
the way of such informers. But so 
ineffectual is the power of legal eva- 
sion against legal iniquity, that it was 
but the other day that a lady of con- 
dition, beyond the middle of life, was 
on the point of being stripped of her 
whole fortune by a near relation, to 
whom she had been a friend and ben» 
ef actor; and she must have been to- 
tally ruined, without a power of re- 
dress or mitigation from the courts of 
law, had not the legislature itself 
rushed in, and, by a special act of 
Parliament, rescued her from the in- 
justice of its own statutes. — Speech 
at Bristol, 1780, Edmund Burke. 

From this extract it will be seen that 
in the interval between 1760 and 1780 a 
change for the better had happened in the 
case of Catholics. A great statesman is 
able to address his constituents and plead 
the cause of men who twenty years before 
were still the object of new restrictions. 
A change there was, a great change and 
the cause of it was — America. The shot 

182 



Caused By the War of Independence. 

that was fired at Lexington had echoed 
round the world. We are accustomed to 
think that our War of Independence had 
for its beneficiaries only the thirteen col- 
onies. AH the sons of men have been 
the beneficiaries of that struggle for lib- 
erty and none more so than the Catholics 
who groaned so long under the tyranny 
of British Protestantism. 

As you may have remarked in these lec- 
tures, the measures passed against the Cath- 
olic Church were the fruit of security not 
of dread. As Burke well says, the Catho- 
lics of England were but a handful of 
people enough to torment, but not enough 
to fear; the Catholics of Ireland, how- 
ever, numbered nearly two millions. 
While England was mistress of the seas 
she might afford to tyrannize with im- 
punity. But there was a revolution in 
her affairs which made it prudent to be 
just. In October, 1777, Burgoyne sur- 
rendered to the American forces at Sara- 
toga. When the news reached Europe it 
had a decisive effect on the fortunes of 

183 



The First Measure of Relief. 



America. In February, 1778, France ac- 
knowledged the independence of the States 
and concluded treaties of alliance and 
commerce with the young republic. Eng- 
land was filled with gloom. On every 
side she was confronted with enemies. 
The danger of an invasion grew more 
imminent every day. It was resolved to 
conciliate the Catholics when it was dan- 
gerous to persecute them. In May, 1778, 
a relief bill was rushed through both 
houses of Parliament. In the lower house 
no one opposed it; in the upper house a 
Protestant bishop with many professions 
of liberality spoke against it; but he 
naively admitted that there were ^^particu- 
lar circumstances which might make delay 
inconvenient." 

The relief of 1778 was not a very large 
or tolerant measure. It merely repealed 
the statute of William of Orange, of which 
we have already spoken. That statute 
subjected Catholic priests and school mas- 
ters to perpetual imprisonment, and gave 
the property of a Catholic to his nearest 

184 



Not Extended to Scotland. 



Protestant relative. This is all that was 
repealed. All the other penal laws re- 
mained on the statute book. Catholics 
were still subject to the pains and pen- 
alties and disabilities of the rest of the 
penal code. Not for another half century 
were those galling provisions swept away, 
and they were swept away only when a 
united Ireland, with O'Connell at its head, 
compelled their abolition. 

Small, however, as the boon was, it 
served to raise the hopes of Catholics. 
The tide of persecution had reached its 
flood, the ebb had now begun. Revolu- 
tions do not go backward. Political ne- 
cessity had made a breach in the wall of 
bigotry; soon the whole structure of in- 
tolerance would come rushing down in 
ruin. 

But the Ghosts which had stalked for 
two centuries, were not to be so easily 
laid. The Act of 1778 had not been ex- 
tended to Scotland. It was proposed, how- 
ever, to give the Scotch Catholics the same 
measure of relief, but the Presbyterians 

i8s 



Presbyterian Opposition to Toleration. 

rose up against the very thought of toler- 
ating the Papists. The press and the pulpit 
stormed against the proposed concession. 
The synods met and passed fiery resolu- 
tions against antichrist. A solemn fast was 
proclaimed in Glasgow, and on the i8th 
of October, 1778, a mob attacked a house 
where a few Catholics were assembled, 
and dispersed them by pelting them with 
mud and stones. On the following Feb- 
ruary the fanatics plundered and burned 
a house where occasionally Mass was said. 
In Edinburgh another mob was summoned 
by public proclamation to "pull down a 
pillar of popery," to wit, a house used 
for Catholic services. After performing 
this pious operation they attacked the 
famous historian, Dr. Robertson, because 
they considered he had leanings towards 
the Papists. The military, however, inter- 
fered and order was restored. 

Then began the Great Protestant Asso- 
ciation. The American Protective Asso- 
ciation is but an alias of the American 
Protestant Association, and the American 

186 



The Great Protestant Association. 

Protestant Association is the lineal de- 
scendant of the Great Protestant Associa- 
tion of 1779. That Association was es- 
tablished for the purpose of preserving 
the ferocious penal laws against Catholics 
in Scotland, and for repealing the relieif 
measure of 1778, in England. The mem- 
bers took an obligation not to buy or sell, 
borrow or lend, or have any of the or- 
dinary intercourse of society with Catho- 
lics. They threatened to proceed against 
all Protestants who refused to join them 
in those measures as if they were Papists, 
and the violent attempts they had made 
against liberal non-Catholics showed that 
they were in earnest. 

The Protestant Association spread from 
Scotland into England and soon the coun- 
try was in a blaze. Everywhere the 
preachers stirred up their congregations 
to mutiny. The "Dangers of Popery'' 
formed their theme, a theme well calcu- 
lated to fire the Protestant blood. A mad- 
man known as Lord George Gordon was 
made president of the Association. Ad- 

187 



Captained by Lord George Gordon. 

vertisements were put up all over the cities 
and mysterious handbills were distributed 
in every house and littered every street. 
The excitement rose to fever heat and if 
the Pope himself had marched in proces- 
sion through the gates of London the pop- 
ulace could not have been more stirred. 

Whenever in our day there is an agita- 
tion against the Church the Methodist 
ministers are the loudest in their cry. They 
deliver eloquent sermons on our civil and 
religious liberty and they profess no de- 
sire except to preserve the heritage handed 
down from the fathers. They see in 
Rome the deadly enemy of all toleration 
and they attack Rome on the plea that 
freedom must be preserved. 

A knowledge of history would recom- 
mend to those gentlemen a judicious mod- 
esty. An acquaintance with the sentiments 
and career of the founder of their denom- 
ination would suggest to them the pru- 
dence of "singing low." No doubt John 
Wesley is held in veneration by those who 
follow his teachings; to Catholics he is 

1 88 



And Championed by John Wesley. 

one of the last of the persecutors. To his 
influence may be attributed the surprising 
growth of the Protestant Association, for 
just as his spiritual successors in this town 
acted as propagandists of the A. P. A. 
did Wesley for the Protestant Association. 
His pen was ever ready to spread its in- 
tolerant principles and to defend it when 
attacked. 

Unfortunately for his reputation, we 
have on record letters which he wrote 
advocating the persecution of Catholics. 
One dated January 12, 1780, holds "that no 
government, not Roman Catholic, ought 
to tolerate men of the Roman Catholic 
persuasion," and, again, "they ought not 
to be tolerated by any government, Prot- 
estant, Mahometan, or Pagan." 

In a pamphlet or tract entitled "A De- 
fence of the Protestant Association," John 
Wesley tells us of the dangers which have 
moved him to write : 

However unconcerned the present 
generation may be, and unapprehen- 
sive of danger from the amazing 

189 



The Founder of Methodism a Bigot. 

growth of Popery; how calmly soever 
they may behold the erection of Pop- 
ish chapels, hear of Popish schools 
being opened, and see the Popish 
books publicly advertised, they are 
to be informed that our ancestors, 
whose wisdom and firmness have trans- 
mitted to us those religious and civil 
liberties which we now enjoy, had 
very different conceptions of this mat- 
ter; and had they acted with that 
coldness, indifference and stupidity 
which seems to have seized the pres- 
ent age, we had now been sunk into 
the most abject state of misery and 
slavery, under an arbitrary prince 
and Popish government. 

What a wonderful opinion Wesley had 
of Catholicism may be judged by this ex- 
tract. The ministers of that religion had 
just been released from the menace of 
perpetual imprisonment, and the professors 
of it were secured merely in the possession 
of their estates, yet Protestantism was in 
danger. All the old penal laws were still 
in force, yet Popery had given evidences 
of an ^^amazing growth." Under such a 

190 



Would Exterminate Catholicism. 

condition of affairs Catholicism could win 
converts, not by earthly motives, for the 
Catholic was still an outlaw, but by pure 
conviction. How does John Wesley pro- 
pose to meet it? If he were conscious of 
the goodness of his cause, he would meet 
the arguments of the old religion by bet- 
ter arguments. But, no. He appealed to 
Caesar and the sword. Restore the penal 
laws. Burn down Popish chapels, close 
Popish schools, exterminate Popish books, 
and then the reformed religion, accord- 
ing to John Wesley, shall prevail against 
Popery — and not till then. 

During May, 1780, Lord George Gor- 
don was haranguing the excited Protes- 
tants of London about the Pope. Lord 
George was the youngest son of the Duke 
of Gordon and was at this time about 
thirty years of age. There can be no doubt 
that he was crazy and his morals were 
as muddled as his brains. He was very 
tall, very thin and very bilious. He had 
high cheek bones and long lank red hair. 
He was dressed in trousers of a red tartan 

191 



Lord George Gordon a Madman. 

plaid, a black velvet coat and spectacles. 
It v^as his firm belief that George III. 
was a Catholic, and in 1780 he opened 
operations on that unlucky monarch by 
securing an audience and reading at him 
a long Irish Protestant pamphlet on the 
errors of Popery. Horace Walpole says 
he began to read it at midday and had not 
finished at nightfall. 

Among the extreme Protestants his pop- 
ularity was unbounded. His rantings were 
considered inspired and he was looked 
upon as a heaven-sent defender of the 
reformed faith, a male Joan of Arc, set 
up by Providence to save Great Britain 
once again from "Popery, Brass Money 
and Wooden Shoes." In all those agita- 
tions it is noticeable that the collection of 
money is considered an outward and visi- 
ble sign of the true evangelical faith. It 
is here we meet for the first time our friend 
the Little Red Schoolhouse. You will 
find in Dickens' novel, "Barnaby Rudge,'' 
a full description of the patriotic edifice 



192 



The Original of the Little Red Schoolhouse. 

used by the Protestant Association for the 
collection of subscriptions: 

Mrs. Varden looked at a box upon 
the mantel-shelf, painted in imitation 
of a very red brick dwelling house, 
with a yellow roof; having at top a 
chimney, down which voluntary sub- 
scribers dropped their silver, gold or 
pence, into the parlor; and on the door 
the counterfeit presentment of a brass 
plate, whereon was legibly inscribed, 
"Protestant Association" — and looking 
at it said that it was to her a source 
of poignant misery to think that Var- 
den never had, of all his substance, 
dropped anything into that temple, 
save once in secret — as she afterwards 
discovered — two fragments of tobacco- 
pipe, which she hoped would not be 
set down to his last account That 
Dolly, she was grieved to say, was no 
less backw^ard in her contributions, 
better loving, as it seemed, to purchase 
ribbons and such gauds, than to en- 
courage the great cause then in such 
heavy tribulation; and that she did 
entreat her (her father she much 
feared could not be moved) not to de- 

193 



Monster Petition Against Catholics. 

spise, but imitate, the bright example 
of Miss Miggs, who flung her wages, 
as it were, into the very countenance 
of the Pope, and bruised his features 
with her quarter's money. — Dickens' 
Barnahy Rudge, Chap. xlt. 

The Protestant Association was prepar- 
ing a monster petition to Parliament 
against the Catholics. At a great meeting 
Lord George Gordon announced that he 
would present the petition to the House 
of Commons on June 2nd. He said, how- 
ever, that unless 20,000 men were ready 
to accompany him, he would not go. It 
was agreed that the members of the As- 
sociation should meet at a certain point 
and then march to the House of Parlia- 
ment. 

On Friday, June 2nd, from 50,000 to 
100,000 men gathered in St. George's 
Fields, Southwark. They wore blue cock- 
ades in their hats as a ^ign of their fidelity 
to the principles of Protestantism. About 
ten o'clock Lord George Gordon made a 
speech to the multitude, and, preceded by 
the great petition containing 120,000 sig- 

194 



Mob Storms Houses of Parliament. 

natures, mostly marks, they advanced to- 
ward Westminster. The government had 
taken no precautions whatsoever. At that 
time police had not been invented and a 
few old watchmen alone represented the 
majesty of the law. The mob was able, 
without opposition, to take possession of 
the avenues of approach to the house, of 
the stairs, and of the division lobbies. 
When the members arrived they had to 
fight their way through a howling mass of 
humanity. Every member, who was not 
known to be opposed to Catholics, was 
nearly torn to pieces. Lord Mansfield, 
the great jurist, was most unpopular be- 
cause he had directed a jury to acquit a 
Catholic priest, who had been charged 
with the monstrous crime of saying Mass. 
When his carriage arrived, the windows 
were broken, the old gentleman was 
howled at as a "notorious Papist." The 
Bishop of Lincoln had his carriage 
smashed to pieces. He fled into a neigh- 
boring house and escaped over the roof 
in a woman's dress. The Duke of Nor- 

195 



Lords and Commons Maltreated. 

thumberland came in his carriage accom- 
panied by his secretary. The secretary 
was dressed in black and the moment the 
mob saw him they raised the cry, ^^A 
Jesuit, a Jesuit!" The Duke was dragged 
out, rolled on the ground, and some zeal- 
ous defender of the Bible, no doubt ac- 
tuated by a desire to show disapprobation 
of Jesuits and Popery, stole his watch and 
purse. 

The House of Lords had in the mean- 
time begun to transact business when word 
came that Lord Boston was in the hands 
of the mob and was being killed. It was 
suggested that the peers as a body should 
sally out to rescue him but more prudent 
counsels prevailed. "At this instant," said 
a contemporary writer, ^4t is hardly possi- 
ble to conceive a more grotesque appear- 
ance than the House of Lords presented. 
Some of their lordships with their hair 
about their shoulders, others smutted with 
dirt, most of them as pale as the ghost in 
Hamlet, and all of them standing up in 
their places and speaking at once." After 

196 



Lord George Gordon Presents Petition. 

half an hour Lord Boston staggered in, 
half dead, his clothes in rags. The mob 
had taken him for a Catholic and were 
about to mark him as one for ever and 
ever by cutting the sign of the cross on 
his forehead. He had, however, managed 
to get speech with them and having 
started a violent controversy among them 
whether or no the Pope was antichrist 
he escaped while they were settling the 
momentous question. 

The Commoners suffered as much as 
the Lords. They too were kicked, cuffed 
and beaten and they reached the Chamber 
with their clothes torn in ribbons and 
covered with mud and filth. Lord George 
presented the petition but no division 
could be taken on it because the lobbies 
were occupied by the mob who pounded 
on the doors, shouting "No Popery." 
Every now and again Lord George would 
address them from the gallery and tell 
them what was going on inside the house. 
"There is Mr. Burke, the member for 
Bristol, speaking against you." "Do you 

197 



Parliament Refuses to Consider Petition. 

know that Lord North calls you a mob?" 
The demeanor of the petitioners now be- 
came so threatening that the prime minis- 
ter sent for the military and Colonel Mur- 
ray, Lord George's cousin, said, ^^My Lord 
George, do you really mean to bring your 
rascally adherents into the House of Com- 
mons? If you do, the first man that en- 
ters, I will plunge my sword not into his 
body but into yours." This speech fright- 
ened the noble defender of the realm 
against the Pope, and ^^he retired to the 
dining room where he fell asleep, listen- 
ing to the moral exhortations of the chap- 
lain." His departure had a soothing ef- 
fect on the mob and when the military ap- 
peared the people dispersed. The lobbies 
now being cleared, the house divided on 
Lord George's motion to consider the pe- 
tition at once. The motion was rejected 
by a vote of 194 to 8 and the matter was 
put over to the following Tuesday. 

Though the mob had retired from the 
Parliament House at the appearance of 
the military, it had not abandoned its 

198 



Mob Burns Down Catholic Chapels. 

purpose of protecting the Protestant re- 
ligion. At that time the foreign ambassa- 
dors from Catholic Powers had their own 
chapels attached to their embassies. This 
was a privilege allowed by the law of 
nations, and could not be taken away by 
the penal laws. The Catholics were in 
the habit of attending those places to hear 
Mass, and their location was well known 
to the mob. Accordingly, after they left 
the House of Parliament, those brave and 
patriotic champions of a pure gospel made 
for the Sardinian and Bavarian chapels. 
The furniture was dragged into the street 
and piled into a great bonfire. The chap- 
els themselves were burned to the ground. 
Fire engines were sent for, but the mob 
prevented their use. When all was over, 
a detachment of soldiers arrived and made 
a few arrests. 

Saturday and Sunday the town was ap- 
parently quiet; but on Sunday night the 
rioting began again. The Lord Mayor 
locked himself up in the Mansion House 
and the general government did nothing. 

199 



Government Apathetic; Mob Rule. 

The Catholics were accustomed to wor- 
ship in upper rooms and out of the way 
places. In Moorfields there was a colony 
of Irish laborers, and to this quarter of 
the town the rioters directed their atten- 
tion. All the Catholic houses were plun- 
dered and burned; and whenever the mob 
came across vestments, altars or taberna- 
cles, a great bonfire was made, in which 
they were solemnly consumed for the 
greater glory of God and the exaltation of 
the reformed faith. 

On Monday afternoon the Privy Coun- 
cil met and offered a reward for the dis- 
covery of the rioters; but still no measures 
were taken to meet force by force. As 
yet, only Catholics had suffered, and there 
was no particular need of repressing too 
firmly the exuberant piety of a British 
mob. But the flame began to spread. On 
Tuesday two other Catholic chapels were 
discovered and burned. The incendiaries, 
to show their devotion to their champion 
against antichrist, carried the furniture 
and ornaments of the chapels to the street 

200 



Houses of Liberal Protestants Attacked. 

before Lord George's house, and there 
gave them to the flames. 

The mover of the relief bill of 1778 
was Sir Geojrge Savile. He was a zealous 
Protestant, but his liberality made him 
worse than a Papist. The rioters now 
attacked his house, carried it by storm 
and plundered it. Lord George Gordon 
and the heads of the Protestant Associa- 
tion, who had remained silent while Cath- 
olics were the sole object of the rioters' 
fury, issued a notice disavowing the riots 
in the name of the Association. Burke, 
who favored tolerance, was compelled to 
take refuge in the house of General Bur- 
goyne. At six o'clock Tuesday evening 
Parliament met. The soldiers were drawn 
up to protect the members and to overawe 
the mob. The question of the petition came 
up before the Commons. Burke made, 
what he considered the best speech of his 
life, on the subject, and, in the course of 
it, he spoke of "that base gang called 
the Protestant Association." The motion 
was carried to consider the petition when 

201 



Newgate Set on Fire; Prisoners Freed. 

the riots had subsided. This angered the 
rioters still more and they went off to at- 
tack the Prime Minister's house on Down- 
ing street, but they found soldiers before 
them. 

Then began the worst period of the 
riots. On Tuesday night, as Gibbon, the 
historian, says, the mob ^^held the town; 
forty thousand Puritans, such as they 
might be in the time of Cromwell, had 
started out of their graves." Rumors went 
round that a Papist invasion was immi- 
nent, that the Pope was coming over, that 
the Inquisition was to be set up. The 
rioters, who had been arrested, were con- 
fined in Newgate, and toward Newgate 
the mob directed their steps. It was a 
prison of immense strength and had lately 
been rebuilt at great cost. The governor 
refused to open the gates and his house 
was set on fire. Soon the whole place was 
in flames, and the shouts of the rioters 
were answered by the screams of prison- 
ers afraid of being burned alive. At last 
a breach was effected, and three hundred 

202 



Chief Justice Mansfield's House Sacked. 

common thieves and felons and four men, 
condemned to death, were set free. The 
mob carried the prisoners on their shoul- 
ders through the streets and hailed them as 
heroes in the great cause. 

That same evening another jail was 
broken open and the house of the Chief 
Justice, Lord Mansfield, was plundered 
and burned. The mob cursed him for a 
Papist, and he had barely time to escape 
by the back door. The house was com- 
pletely demolished and thousands of val- 
uable books and priceless manuscripts went 
up in flames. The rioters got drunk, as 
usual, and many were crushed to death or 
roasted in the ruins. 

On Wednesday the riots were at their 
height. ^'Terrible rumors flew round the 
town; the lunatics were to be let out of 
Bedlam, the lions out of the Tower, and, 
worst of all, 70,000 Scotch Protestants out 
of Scotland." Of course, business was en- 
tirely suspended, the shops were shut, and, 
as a sign that the householder was a true 
Protestant, "no Popery" was chalked on 

203 



Thirty-six Fires Burning at Same Time. 

every doon Two attacks were made on 
the Bank of England, but the rioters were 
beaten off. As many as thirty-six great 
fires were seen burning at the one time. 
Happily the atmosphere remained still. 
If a wind had arisen, nothing could have 
saved the city from destruction. Horri- 
ble scenes took place at the burning of the 
distillery kept by a Mr. Langdale, a 
Catholic. The contents of the great vaults 
were poured into the street and caught 
fire. The drunken mob, aye, even women 
and children, were seen rolling in the 
flames and lapping up the liquid fire. 

The gutters of the street and every 
crack and fissure in the stones ran 
with scorching spirit, which, being 
dammed up by busy hands, overflowed 
the road and pavement and formed a 
great pool into which the people drop- 
ped down dead by dozens. They lay 
in heaps all around this fearful pond, 
husbands and wives, fathers and sons, 
mothers and daughters, women with 
children in their arms and babies at 
their breast, and drank until they died. 

204 



Rioters Loot Distillery and Die in Flames. 

While some stooped, with their lips 
to the brink, and never raised their 
heads again, others sprang up from 
their fiery draught and danced, half 
in a mad triumph and half in the 
agony of suffocation, until they fell 
and steeped their corpses in the li- 
quor that had killed them. Nor was 
even this the worst or most appalling 
kind of death that happened on this 
fatal night. From the burning cel- 
lars, where they drank out of hats, 
pails, buckets, tubs and shoes, some 
men were drawn, alive, but alight 
from head to foot; who, in their un- 
endurable anguish and suffering, mak- 
ing for anything that had the look of 
water, rolled, hissed in this hideous 
lake, and splashed up the liquid fire, 
which lapped up all it met with as 
it ran along the surface, and spared 
neither the living nor the dead. On 
this last night of the great riots — for 
the last night it was — the wretched 
victims of a senseless outcry became 
themselves the dust and ashes of the 
flames they had kindled, and strewed 
the public streets of London. — Bar- 
naby Rudge, Chap. Ixviit. 

205 



Government Calls Out the Soldiers. 

Up to this the government appeared to 
be paralyzed. Means were at hand in- 
deed to quell the disturbance but nothing 
was done. While the Catholic chapels 
were burning the soldiers looked on with 
loaded muskets in their hands and huzzaed 
with the mob. But by Wednesday it was 
clearly seen that unless the government 
should intervene London would soon be 
only a name. The advisers of the King 
were in hopeless confusion. They were 
afraid to order the soldiers to fire before 
the Riot Act had been read. George 
III., however, solved the difficulty. 
^*There shall be," he said, "at all events 
one magistrate in the kingdom who will 
do his duty." The soldiers were called 
out and the mob was checked. They had 
no firearms and could make but little 
resistance to the troops. Many were shot 
down, many threw themselves into the 
Thames. The soldiers' bayonets ran with 
blood, and all that dreadful night citi- 
zens lay awake listening to the shooting 
and the shrieks of the rioters. The official 

206 



Mob Routed; Lord George Arrested. 

returns calculated that two hundred were 
killed and two hundred and fifty wounded, 
but the destruction of life must have been 
much greater. When the burned houses 
were rebuilt it was not an uncommon 
thing to come upon the remains of man- 
gled bodies. Many of the dead and 
wounded were taken away secretly by their 
friends. A thousand fatalities would be a 
moderate estimate of the results of this agi- 
tation to prevent the growth of Popery, 
and to preserve the Protestant religion. 

This display of force served to end the 
riots. On Thursday the town was quiet 
and on Friday business was resumed as be- 
fore. On that sam.e day Lord George 
Gordon was arrested and sent to the 
Tower. The Lord Mayor of London v/as 
tried and convicted of gross neglect. But 
the no-Popery spirit had not been ex- 
tinguished by the terrible excesses of its 
representatives. The most absurd rumors 
were circulated about the increase in the 
number of Papists and their presence in 
the court. It was said that the royal 

207 



Parliament Affected By No Popery. 

family patronized Catholics extensively 
and the Lord Chamberlain was forced to 
insert such advertisements in the papers 
as this: ^We are authorized to assure 
the public that Mr. Bicknell, His Maj- 
esty's hosier, is as true and faithful a 
Protestant as any in His Majesty's do- 
minions. We likev^ise have the best au- 
thority for saying that His Majesty's wine- 
merchants are Protestants." 

When Parliament met after the riots, 
the great Protestant Petition was taken up 
in the Commons. Though the Legislature 
had shown dignity and firmness in re- 
fusing to act under the terrorism of the 
mob, there is no doubt that the no-Popery 
craze also affected them. Sir George 
Savile, who had introduced the original 
toleration act, brought in a bill to guard 
against Catholic conversions. No Catholic 
was to keep a school or to have a Prot- 
estant apprentice. The bill passed the 
Commons, but was thrown out in the 
Lords. 

The consideration of the Petition drew 

208 



Fox and Burke Speak in Vain for Toleration. 

forth a series of resolutions, insisting upon 
the retention of the law of 1778, but mak- 
ing a concession to the Protestant spirit 
by insisting also on the criminality of 
making conversions to Catholicism. It 
was on this occasion that Fox made his 
great speech in favor of toleration. The 
ideas of America were in the air. Men 
were beginning to see the futility of pun- 
ishing those whose only crime was that 
they would not be hypocrites. It was the 
omen of a happier day, that the House 
of Commons could ring with such gen- 
erous sentiments. But Fox and Burke 
were ahead of their time. It is not a 
century and a quarter since they stood 
among English Protestants as the pioneers 
of toleration. They died without seeing 
the results of their labor. Nigh fifty 
years had to pass before their dreams 
were realized. Bigotry dies hard. Tol- 
erance is a plant of slow growth. The 
thoughts of men are widened with the 
process of the suns; but oh, how slight 



209 



Trial and Acquittal of Lord George Gordon. 

is the widening! How leaden are the feet 
of progress! 

But to return to the rioters. In July 
a special commission sat to try them. By 
the end of the month 135 had been found 
guilty. Twenty-one were hanged, some of 
whom were bovs under fourteen. Lord 
George Gordon was put on trial for trea- 
son in 1 78 1. During the trial he had a 
large Bible open before him all the time 
and was very angry because the court re- 
fused to let him read four chapters of 
the Prophet Zacharias in self defense. The 
jury brought in a verdict of acquittal and 
public thanksgivings were offered up in 
many churches for his delivery, while the 
Scotch Presbyterians subscribed five hun- 
dred pounds to pay his legal expenses. 

Lord George's career after this period 
was very remarkable. He was excom- 
municated by the Protestant Archbishop 
of Canterbury for refusing to give evi- 
dence in an ecclesiastical case. This was 
a sad recompense for his labors in pre- 
serving his country from the Pope, but it 

210 



His Subsequent Career; Becomes a Jew. 

only shows that churches, like republics, 
can be ungrateful. About 1786 he became 
a Jew, and called himself the Right Hon. 
Israel Bar Abraham George Gordon. He 
was as crotchety in his new creed as he 
was in his old. He wore a long beard, 
and he refused to speak to any Jew who 
did not sport the same appendage. In 
1787 he was convicted of libel, but before 
sentence was passed he fled to Amsterdam. 
The honest Dutch burghers did not know 
what to do with him, so they sent him 
back to England. In 1788 he was brought 
up for judgment and was committed to 
Newgate. After five years' imprisonment, 
he died in 1793. 

It w^as the unanimous opinion of his en- 
lightened contemporaries, and it is the 
unanimous opinion of historians, that Lord 
George Gordon was a lunatic. His ac- 
tions, his speeches, show that he was stark 
mad. If he lived in our day, he would 
be considered a fit subject for an insane 
asylum. Indeed, there are many in such 
institutions now not half as mad as Lord 

211 



Imprisoned Because of Influence With Mob. 

George was. There can be little doubt 
that the long sentence which was given 
him, was given merely to keep him under 
restraint. There was a well grounded 
fear that at any time he might put himself 
at the head of another mob. Indeed, the 
people looked upon him with superstitious 
reverence, as one who had fought the good 
fight in the defense of the Protestant cause ; 
and notwithstanding the horrors and 
butchery of the riot, there were not want- 
ing evidence that ardent Protestant spirits 
were ready to rally round their ancient 
leader and burn a few more Catholic 
chapels. 

It is a poor compliment to the English 
people, or to any people, to state that they 
could be swayed to rebellion and blood- 
shed at the dictate of a madman. Yet I but 
speak the truth, and before we rush in 
to condemn let us listen to the story of 
our own Ghost and see what has been 
done in our own land. There is no sen- 
timent which so destroys human reason, 
eliminates common sense and uproots natu- 

212 



As Blindly Fanatical as Turks. 

ral affection as religious bigotry. Be- 
tween the fanaticism of the Turk, who 
rushes on the Christian confident of a 
place in Paradise, and the fanaticism of 
the British Protestant of the last century 
who fell, dead drunk, under the leader- 
ship of George Gordon, there is absolutely 
no difference. 

Certainly the work of the Ghosts was 
well done. For over two centuries the 
old faith had been made a byword and a 
hissing. Seven generations of English- 
men had grown up, and each generation 
had outstripped its predecessor in its ter- 
ror of the Pope. The ^^ncrease of Pop- 
ery" haunted it by night and day. Even 
though the vast machinery of the law 
was in unceasing operation searching out 
Papists, beggaring them, imprisoning them, 
banishing them beyond seas, sending them 
to the block. Protestantism could not rest 
secure. There was blood upon its hands, 
and like the murderer it knew no rest 
in slumber. Hideous dreams, fantastic 
ghosts, peopled its imagination, and every 

213 



Protestants and the Reformed Calendar. 

now and again it sprang into fury and 
sought to exterminate the objects of its 
hate. 

It is hard nowadays to realize the extent 
and the strength of this blind terror of 
Popery. You know that the calendar, or 
our method of reckoning time, is a very 
complicated arrangement. As the sun in 
its course round the earth consumes a frac- 
tion more than three hundred and sixty- 
five days, our reckoning of three hundred 
and sixty-five days to the year is not accu- 
rate. As the fraction is very small it was 
not noticed at first, but in the course of cen- 
turies it became so great that it amounted 
to more than a week. In 1582 Pope Greg- 
ory XIII. reformed the calendar, and in- 
troduced the system which obtains among 
us to-day. The Catholic countries adopted 
the change; but the Protestant nations, 
which are, according to their own notions, 
in the van of progress, clung to the anti- 
quated calendar, because the new style 
was the work of a Pope. England did not 
come into line until 1751. By that time 

214 



"Give Us Back Our Eleven Days." 

the error had amounted to eleven days, and 
it was necessary to suppress them, nom- 
inally, in September, 1752. The pious 
British Protestants were, in the first place, 
scandalized that a Protestant government 
should sanction a Popish invention, and, 
in the second place, they were convinced 
that in some way or other the Pope had 
got hold of the missing days and was ap- 
plying them to his own nefarious purposes. 
The mob rose in its wrath, surrounded the 
ministers' houses, and split the air with 
the demand, ''Give us back our eleven 
days." 

It is not, therefore, surprising that a peo- 
ple so impregnated with the anti-Popish 
spirit should be responsive even to the 
wild harangues of a ''lunatic apostle.'' It 
shows the power of prejudice, the power of 
tradition, the power of calumny. Neither 
in the days of the Gunpowder Plot, nor 
in the days of the Fire of London, nor in 
the days of Titus Gates, nor in the days 
of George Gordon was there the slightest 
reason for the Protestant terror. The pop- 

215 



Catholic* Weak and Long-Suffering. 

ular fear was engendered by Ghosts. It 
was fed on whispers and rumors and vague 
alarms. Even if Catholics wished to in- 
jure their Protestant neighbors, it does not 
appear that they had it in their power 
to do so. They were few and scattered, 
and without leaders. Indeed, it has always 
seemed to. me that the Catholics of Eng- 
land were too loyal and law-abiding. If 
they had been more self-assertive; if, when 
they numbered a large proportion of the 
population, as they did in the time of 
James, they had defended their conscien- 
tious rights with the sword, they might 
have fared better — they could not have 
fared worse. But they chose the path of 
quiet suffering, and walked in it with stead- 
fast feet. In this they did not show that 
they lacked courage; because it takes a 
higher degree of courage to suffer pa- 
tiently and serenely and steadfastly through 
long years than to risk everything on one 
wild dash. We can hardly understand the 
long martyrdom of our brethren in the 
faith during the time I have been describ- 

216 



The Experience of Bishop Challoner. 

ins:. Ill the Gordon riots we have the 
record of that venerable prelate, Dr. Chal- 
loner, whose works are still read among us. 
His name was in special detestation with 
the rioters, and they announced their deter- 
mination to murder him^. He was ninety 
years of age, and moved from hiding place 
to hiding place, with the mob upon his 
track. In a little room, on his knees, with 
tears streaming from his eyes — tears not 
for himself, but for his harassed flock — the 
aged Bishop prayed while through the 
streets the mob surged. He is but a figure 
of the thousands who suffered in those dark 
days — thousands of men and women of 
whom the world was not worthy. 

For us those days have their lesson. Not 
only do they bring out what is the main 
object of these lectures — the baselessness of 
the clamor against Catholics, and the 
sources from which modern Protestant 
prejudices spring — but they afford us an 
object lesson of the hideousness of bigotry 
and of the manner in which it should be 
met. Bigotry is a bully. It is cruel to 

217 



Bigotry Bold is Bigotry Bloodthirsty. 

the defenseless and the weak. It dares not 
attack those who can strike back. The 
cringing air, the suppliant knee, the silent 
mouth make bigotry bold, and bigotry bold 
is bigotry bloodthirsty. But a determina- 
tion to defend our rights to the end, with- 
out encroaching on the rights of others, 
and a plain expression of our determination 
so to do, will in every case secure us from 
its malevolence. It is not necessary to be 
aggressive; it is not necessary to put our- 
selves in the way of bigotry; it is wrong to 
insult our neighbors' conscientious convic- 
tions, but it is necessary to stand by our 
rights when any one attacks them, and it 
is right to defend our own conscien- 
tious convictions when they are called in 
question. 



218 



V -THE ECCLESIASTICAL 
TITLES BILL. 

WE ARE coming to the end of this 
series of lectures. It may be use- 
ful, therefore, to take a back- 
ward glance and see what we set out to 
study and what are the results of our inves- 
tigations. You will remember that I said in 
the beginning that our subject would be 
the great Protestant Tradition. Tradi- 
tion means something handed down, and 
we undertook to examine the popular 
notion about Catholicism, which for three 
hundred years has been handed down 
from Protestant father to Protestant son. 
As the main stem of American Protestant- 
ism is of English origin, it was necessary 
to study this tradition as manifested in 
England. Hence, we have been dealing 
exclusively with English history. We 
found that, both here and across the 
water, the tradition was a fact. The 
Catholic Church comes before the world 

219 



The Power of the Protestant Tradition. 

and makes certain claims. All she asks 
is that those outside her pale should ex- 
amine those claims. She asks for no 
favor from them. She wishes to be 
judged by the same rule of right reason 
that they apply to the other transactions 
of life. If her claims do not approve 
themselves to sincere inquirers she has 
nothing more to say. She makes only the 
one demand — that the inquirers will in- 
quire, and not pass her by with contempt. 
Here it is she meets with the great 
Protestant Tradition. Men and women 
who will inquire into every subject, from 
the Single Tax to Theosophy, will not 
inquire into the claims of the Church. It 
is a settled fact with them that these 
claims have been examined and found 
wanting. This is the Protestant Tradi- 
tion. There is no use studying this ex- 
ploded superstition. Some of them turn 
on lier in anger, and denounce her as a 
curse. They have no reason but the Tra- 
dition. So they heard their fathers say, 
and so say they. Others pass her by with 

220 



Based Upon Misrepresentation. 

a contemptuous smile — she is finished; 
the last word has been said in her case; 
she has no longer any standing in court; 
let the dead bury their dead. Neither has 
this class any reason for its opinion but 
the great Tradition — so it is written; so 
it must be.- 

We went a step further, and inquired 
how it is possible that men should be able 
to hate or ignore an institution which we 
believe has been founded by Christ to 
bring the tidings of salvation to all the 
world. Then we found that those men 
hate or ignore, not the Church, but a 
Ghost which they take to be the Church. 
Some see a hideous and cruel specter. 
They hate it, and they fear it. They will 
not 2:0 near it or examine it. If thev did 
they would soon find that it is a phantom 
of prejudiced minds. Others see a weak, 
jabbering, imbecile Ghost, a very scare- 
crow, beneath the notice of grown men. 
Neither will they examine for themselves. 
If they did they would learn that this 
Ghost, too, is the offspring of ignorance. 

221 



Produced for Political Ends. 



Then we advanced another step, and 
we asked, What is the origin of these 
Ghosts? Why is it that, to English-speak- 
ing Protestants the Catholic Church 
should be something to be hated or some- 
thing to be despised? Why should 
Protestants refuse so pertinaciously to ex- 
amine her claims? Why should they 
turn away their faces so steadily from 
the light of her eyes? We found the ori- 
gin of these Ghosts in the facts of Eng- 
lish political history during the past three 
hundred years. We saw how they were 
created by skillful politicians, and how 
they were used to impress on the English 
people the charge that Catholics were 
disloyal and bloodthirsty. We saw how, 
from year to year, and from century to 
century, that charge was reiterated in the 
pulpit, on the platform, from public 
monument, by act of Parliament, by royal 
speech. We saw how Catholics were 
slowly, but surely, exterminated. The 
Protestant Tradition had it all its own 
wav. The Catholic could not answer 

222 



The Downfall of the Penal System. 

back. Should he attempt to defend his 
name, he did so at the peril of life and 
limb. Thus the Tradition became an in- 
stitution of the country not to be doubted 
or disturbed. Thus Catholics were made 
a feeble folk, whose silence and feebleness 
were attributed not to the strong, repress- 
ive hand of a persecuting government, 
but to the consciousness that they could 
not defend the absurd doctrines they were 
credited with believing, nor disprove the 
scandalous charges that were laid to their 
account. 

In the last lecture we saw that necessity 
had made a change in the English policy 
toward Catholicism. As long as England 
had no great interests outside her own 
shores, she might be able to deal with 
domestic disaffection with a strong hand. 
But the American War taught her the 
necessity of conciliating her own citizens. 
The American War produced the French 
War, the Spanish War, and, to use the 
words of Fox, ^^armed forty-two thou- 
sand men in Ireland with the arguments 

223 



The Relief Measures of 1791. 

carried on the points of forty-two thou- 
sand bayonets." In 1791 an Act was 
passed which removed some of the most 
obnoxious features of the Penal Laws. 
An oath of allegiance was framed, and 
those who took it were exempt from ^^the 
penalties for hearing or saying Mass or 
perform.ing any religious service in their 
places of worship, or for being a priest or 
member of a religious order, or for enter- 
ing any such order, provided that such 
places of Catholic worship are duly cer- 
tified to the Justices of the Peace at 
Quarter Sessions; provided, also, that 
such places have not steeples and bells, 
and that such ecclesiastics shall not wear 
their vestments or habits out of their 
churches, or in a private house where not 
more than five persons are assembled." 
All the' other pains and penalties were in 
force. The Catholics were excluded from 
political life, they were forbidden to en- 
dow a school or college for the education 
of their children, they were subjected to 
a double imposition of the land tax. 

224 



Catholic Emancipation Won By O'Connell. 

Catholic soldiers were compelled to at- 
tend Protestant services, and if Catholics 
wished to get married they had to go be- 
fore a Protestant preacher. It was, there- 
fore, well written as late as the year 1828, 
^'Catholics are only known to the Consti- 
tution for the purpose of pains and penal- 
ties. We are worse than aliens in our 
native land, inasmuch as an alien is under 
the protection of equal laws, which we 
are not.'^ 

That Catholics would be restored to 
political equality with Protestants there 
was little hope, if such restoration de- 
pended on the English Catholics. They 
were few, and without influence. But a 
great power had been growing up in Ire- 
land. The Irish Catholic population was 
increasing by leaps and bounds. The two 
millions of the time of Edmund Burke 
had grown to six millions. God at last 
had raised up a leader to marshal those 
millions into a solid phalanx before 
which no government could stand. In 
1829 ^^^ British ministry introduced the 

225 



Forced Through by Fear of Civil War. 

Emancipation Act, and defended their 
course not on the ground of tolerance or 
of justice, but on the ground that if Eman- 
cipation were refused the country must 
face civil war. 

For the deliverance, therefore, from the 
Penal Laws the Catholics have no one to 
thank but themselves. As long as it was 
possible to withhold justice from them, 
justice was withheld. Only when they 
became too strong to be kept in slavery 
were their chains stricken of¥. The relief 
was given ungracefully and grudgingly 
when it would be dangerous to refuse. 
They have, therefore, no debt of gratitude 
to the English Parliament or to the Eng- 
lish politicians. They got their rights 
when thev were able to take them. 

This is true of the Catholics of Ireland; 
but unfortunately it is not true of the 
Catholics of England. I have already 
called your attention to the disappearance 
of English Catholicism. At the beginning 
of this century there were not in all Eng- 
land and Wales seventy thousand people 

226 



The Low Estate of Catholics in England. 

professing that faith. They had no influ- 
ence — social or political — and excepting 
a few old families they had no wealth. 
They were trained by centuries of perse- 
cution to shun public notice, thinking 
themselves fortunate if they were allowed 
to live. There was no Catholic literature, 
there were few priests, the services of the 
Church were conducted in hired rooms 
or in mean buildings called chapels. 
Cardinal Newman, with his matchless 
felicity, described the condition of the 
Catholic community at the opening of 
this century in that wonderful sermon 
known as the ^^Second Spring": 

One and all of us can bear witness 
to the fact of the utter contempt into 
which Catholicism had fallen by the 
time that we were born. You, alas, 
know it far better than I can know it; 
but it may not be out of place if by one 
or two tokens, as by the strokes of a 
pencil, I bear witness to you from 
without of what you can witness much 
more truly from within. No longer 
the Catholic Church in the country; 

227 



Described by Newman in Second Spring. 

nay, no longer, I may say, a Catholic 
community, but a few adherents of the 
Old Religion, moving silently and sor- 
rowfully about, as memorials of what 
had been. ^The Roman Catholics" — 
not a sect, not even an interest, as men 
conceived of it; not a body, however 
small, representative of the Great 
Communion abroad, but a mere hand- 
ful of individuals, who might be 
counted, like the pebbles and detritus 
of the great deluge, and who, forsooth, 
merely happened to retain a creed 
which, in its day, indeed, was the pro- 
fession of a Church. Here a set of 
poor Irishmen, coming or going at 
harvest time, or a colony of them 
lodged in a miserable quarter of the 
vast metropolis. There, perhaps an 
elderly person, seen walking in the 
streets, grave and solitary, and strange, 
though noble in bearing, and said to 
be of good family, and a ^^Roman 
Catholic." An old-fashioned house of 
gloomy appearance, closed in with 
high walls, with an iron gate, and 
yews, and the report attaching to it 
that ^^Roman Catholics" lived there; 
but who they were or what they did, 

228 



As Seen From Protestant Viewpoint. 

or what was meant by calling them 
^^Roman Catholics" no one could 
tell — though it had an unpleasant 
sound, and told of form and supersti- 
tion. And then, perhaps, as we went 
to and fro, looking with a boy's cu- 
rious eyes through the great city, we 
might come to-day upon some Mora- 
vian chapel, or Quakers' meeting- 
house, and to-morrow on a chapel of 
the Roman Catholics ; but nothing was 
to be gathered from it, except that 
there were lights burning there, and 
some boys, in white, swinging censers ; 
and what it all meant could only be 
learned from books, from Protestant 
histories and sermons, and they did 
not report well of ^^the Roman Cath- 
olics," but, on the contrary, deposed 
that they had once had power and 
had abused it. And then, again, we 
might on one occasion hear it pointed 
out by some literary man, as the re- 
sult of his careful investigation, and 
as a recondite point of information, 
which few knew, that there was this 
difference between the Roman Cath- 
olics of England and the Roman 
Catholics of Ireland, that the latter 

229 



Utterly Feeble and Contemptible. 

had Bishops, and the former were 
governed by four officials called 
Vicars Apostolic. Such was about 
the sort of knowledge of Christianity 
by the heathen of old time, who perse- 
cuted its adherents from the face of 
the earth, and then called them a gens 
lucifugaj 2i people who shunned the 
light of day. Such were the Catho- 
lics in England — found in corners, 
and alleys, and cellars, and the house- 
tops, or in the recesses of the country; 
cut off from the populous world 
around them, and dimly seen, as if 
through a mist or in twilight, as 
ghosts flitting to and fro, by the high 
Protestants, the lords of the earth. 
At length, so feeble did they become, 
so utterly contemptible, that contempt 
gave birth to pity; and the more gen- 
erous of their tyrants actually began 
to wish to bestow on them some favor, 
under the notion that their opinions 
were simply too absurd ever to spread 
again, and that they, themselves, were 
they but raised in civil importance, 
would soon unlearn and be ashamed of 
them. And thus, out of mere kind- 
ness to us, they began to vilify our 

230 



The Church Begins to Revive in England, 

doctrines to the Protestant world, 
that so our very idiocy, or our secret 
unbelief, might be our plea for mercy, 
— Newman, ^^The Second Spring/^ 

Emancipation had given the Catholic 
Church liberty, and that is all she needs. 
Unlike those sects which depend for their 
permanence on the support of the civil 
power, she is able to stand alone. She 
could now come into the light and speak 
for herself. She could set forth her doc- 
trines, defend them, dispel calumny and 
misrepresentation, and present her claims 
to the English-speaking world. Of course 
the power of the Tradition made itself 
felt. There were few who listened to 
her, but those who did listen soon learned 
to recognize the voice of God's messen- 
ger. Little by little the leaven began to 
work in the lump. Little by little men 
saw that she was a living organization 
with a mission not to be despised. Her 
children rallied round her, as faithful in 
the days of freedom as they had been in 
the days of adversity. As yet they were 

231 



The Divisions of English Protestantism. 

but a little flock; but two movements now 
began which were destined to bring thou- 
sands to her fold and to make her, as she 
had been of old, the joyful mother of 
children. 

The first of these movements began m 
the bosom of the Established Church it- 
self. You may remember that I described 
to you tvs^o parties which existed among 
the English Protestants from the very be- 
ginning of Protestantism. As Protestant- 
ism means a protest against the Old Faith, 
it is only natural that there should be de- 
grees in that protest. Some rejected more 
doctrines than the others. Thus, the Pres- 
byterians reject government by Bishops, 
and the Congregationalists reject govern- 
ment by Presbyteries. We thus have in 
English Protestantism two great wings or 
parties, commonly known as High Church 
and Low Church. In the time of Charles 
IT. the Puritans, or the Extreme Low 
Churchmen, were forced out of the Es- 
tablishment, and formed the dissenting 
sects, or, as we call them now, Baptists, 

232 



Triumph of the Low Church Party. 

Presbyterians and Congregationalists. Still, 
only the extremists left the Establish- 
ment, and the body of the Anglican 
cl^^gy were thoroughly opposed to any- 
thing savoring of Catholicism, even 
though they did submit to government by 
Bishops. 

Of course you understand that in the 
English Church the government appoints 
the Bishops, When the members of a 
government are of Low Church procliv- 
ities it is only natural that they should 
appoint Low Church Bishops. This was 
the practice followed after the revolution 
of 1688, and we learn from Protestant 
authority that those Bishops were more 
intent on their own advancement than on 
the betterment of the spiritual condition 
of their flocks : 

A large number of the prelates 
were mere Whig partisans, with no 
higher aim than that of their own 
promotion. ... A Welsh Bishop 
avowed that he had seen his dio- 
cese but once. ... A shrewd, 
if prejudiced, observer brands the 

233 



Utter Decadence of Anglican Church* 

English clergy of the day as the most 
lifeless in Europe, ^'the most remiss 
of their labors in private and the least 
severe in their lives." There was a 
revolt against religion and against 
churches in both the extremes of Eng- 
lish society. In the higher circles of 
society ^'every one laughs," said Mon- 
tesquieu, on his visit to England, ''ii 
one talks of religion." Of the promi- 
nent statesmen of the time, the greater 
part were unbelievers in any form of 
Christianity, and distinguished for the 
grossness and immorality of their 
lives. . • . At the other end of 
the social scale lay the masses of the 
poor. They were ignorant and brutal 
to a degree which it is hard to con- 
ceive, for the increase of population 
which followed on the growth of 
towns and the development of com- 
merce had been met by no effort for 
their religious or educational im- 
provement. Not a new parish had 
been created. Schools there were none, 
save the grammar schools of Edward 
and Elizabeth, and some newly es- 
tablished ^^circulating schools" in 
Wales, for religious education. The 

234 



Debased Conditions of Public Morals. 

rural peasantry, who were fast being 
reduced to pauperism by the abuse of 
the Poor Laws were left without 
much moral or religious support of 
any sort. ^^We saw only one Bible in 
the parish of Cheddar," said Hannah 
More, at a far later time, ^'and that 
was used to prop a flower pot." With- 
in the towns, things were worse. 
There was no effective police, and in 
great outbreaks the mob of London 
or Birmingham burnt houses, flung 
open prisons, and sacked and pillaged 
at their will. The criminal class 
gathered numbers and boldness in the 
face of ruthless laws, which only tes- 
tified to the terror of society — laws 
which made it a capital crime to cut 
down a cherry tree, and which strung 
up twenty young thieves of a morning 
in front of Newgate ; while the intro- 
duction of gin gave a new impetus to 
drunkenness ; in the streets of London 
at one time gin shops invited every 
passer-by to get drunk for a penny or 
dead drunk for tv\^opence, — ''Green's 
Short History of the English People/' 
Chap. X. 

The first attempt to remedy this sad 

235 



The Movement Under the Wesleys. 

State of affairs was made by the Wesleys. 
John Wesley was a clergyman in the Es- 
tablished Church, and, to the end, he did 
not wish to break with it. His movement, 
however, was on extreme Low Church 
lines, and soon the Methodists became a 
separate sect. But they had broken the 
torpor of the Establishment, and by the 
beginning of the present century signs 
were not wanting that many of the 
thoughtful and earnest men of that com- 
munion were seriously considering their 
relations both to their own church and to 
the other churches into which Christen- 
dom is divided. 

Oxford is one of the great English uni- 
versities. Founded in Catholic times, and 
endowed by a Catholic generosity, it be- 
came, after the Reformation, thoroughly 
Protestant. A large proportion of the 
clergymen of the Established Church re- 
ceived their training in its colleges, and 
the most scholarly men in Anglican Or- 
ders occupied its fellowships and pro- 
fessorial chairs. In the eighteenth cen- 

236 



The Oxford Men and the Historic Church. 

tury Methodism took its rise in Oxford, 
and in the nineteenth century another re- 
ligious movement, the very opposite of 
Methodism, found its origin there. 

The Church is a historical fact. She 
was founded by Christ and she has come 
down all the centuries to our day. In 
breaking away from Rome the Protes- 
tants had justified their schism on the plea 
that Rome had departed from the sim- 
plicity of the Apostles. The extreme 
Protestants held that nothing should be 
believed or practiced for which there was 
not clear warrant in the Bible. The less 
extreme Protestants, or xA^nglicans, held 
that the belief and practice of the Church 
in the first four or five centuries should 
be the rule and guide of the Church now. 
The new movement arose from a his- 
torical study of those centuries. It was 
not a popular movement; it was, on the 
contrary, begun among the fellows and 
professors, and had its chief strength 
among men of learning. From their read- 
ing they reconstructed the Church as it 

237 



The High Church Theory; Ritualism. 

Stood in the early ages, and they compared 
it with the body to which they belonged. 
They found that Anglicanism had degen- 
erated into a mere department of the Eng- 
lish civil service, without knowledge of 
what she believed, and without power to 
teach it. They saw the ancient Church, 
full of life and vigor, with a creed which 
was inculcated authoritatively and with- 
out equivocation. They believed that their 
Church was the lineal successor of this 
ancient Church. They thought that the 
Reformation had been only a reforma- 
tion — not the introduction of a new re- 
ligion. They had no love for Rome. 
She was filled with abominations, though 
they confessed that, equally with England 
and Russia, she was a branch of the one 
great Catholic Church. They called 
themselves Catholics, but, as they said, 
not Roman Catholics. They spurned the 
title Protestant and spoke with bitterness 
of the Reformers. They wished to re- 
store the old ideals, to teach the old doc- 
trines, to bring back the old practices. 

238 



Puseyites; Tractarians; Oxford Movement. 

They did not want the Pope. It was an 
essential portion of their theory that their 
Church was independent. But, short of 
the Pope, they would be Catholics. From 
their elaborate ritual they were called 
Ritualists; from ons of their great lead- 
ers, Dr. Pusey, they were called Pusey- 
ites. From the fact that they began 
their agitation by the publication of a 
series of Tracts of the Times, they were 
called Tractarians, and the whole move- 
ment is commonly spoken of as the Ox- 
ford Movement. 

The greatest of all the Tractarians was 
John Henry Newman. His piety, his 
learning, his power of expression made 
him the soul of the party. He was sin- 
cere in his belief that the Anglican 
Church was the Church of Christ, and 
for ten years, from 1833 to 1843, he 
labored as few men can labor to advance 
her cause. From the beginning Catholics 
who were watching the movement pro- 
phesied where it would end. They saw 
with the instinct of the faith that once 

239 



John Henry Newman Their Leader. 

the idea of a teaching Church took pos- 
session of the minds of those generous 
and devoted men logic would lead 
them to the one Fold. Newman, how- 
ever, believed most firmly in the divine 
character of Anglicanism until a rude 
shock showed him that she was Protes- 
tant to the core. One of the tracts 
known as Tract 90 tried to prove 
that the chief Catholic doctrines are not 
inconsistent with .the Anglican formula 
of faith known as the Thirty-nine Arti- 
cles. The authorities of the Establish- 
ment took the alarm. They knew they 
were Protestants, and they did not want 
any one to turn them into Catholics by 
sleight of hand. They condemned the 
tract, and Newman began to see that the 
church he loved so well was not the 
same as that glorious old Church of the 
first centuries of which history tells. But 
the vision came slowly. For four long 
and weary years the conviction was grow- 
ing: on him that the Church of Rome 
was the Church of the Fathers. The 

240 



His Conversion a Blow to the Establishment. 

conviction v^^as unwelcome; he fought 
against it. He was forty-four years of 
age, and all his friendships were in the 
English Church, and his affectionate na- 
ture clung to the University as a child to 
its mother. Rome, too, he had been taught 
was filled with abominations, and he had 
spoken bitterly against her. For four 
years the conflict went on. At last the 
light shone upon him and he who had 
prayed so many years before *^Lead, 
Kindly Light," arose and followed the 
light. It led him from his father's house, 
from his own people, but it led him into 
the one Fold and to the feet of Him 
who is the true Shepherd of our souls. 

Newman became a Catholic in 1845, 
and the sensation was immense. Disraeli 
said that his secession from Anglicanism 
^^dealt a blow to the Church of England, 
under which she still reels." The Oxford 
Movement was having its logical results. 
Some of the most distinguished clergymen 
in England laid down their benefices and 
became Catholics. Between 1842 and 

241 



The Irish Immigration Into England. 

1856 over two hundred ministers, besides 
many laymen, had left the Establishment; 
by 1867 the total number of notable con- 
verts had risen nearly to nine hundred. 

While this movement gave much pres- 
tige to the Church, the numbers, as com- 
pared v^ith the Anglican population, were 
inconsiderable. But in the forties began 
another movement which was destined to 
treble the Catholic strength in fifty years. 
In 1845 the population of Ireland was 
over eight millions, but the great famine 
soon came, and the people fled from 
their native' land. The vast majority came 
to America, but over half a million 
settled in the English towns. They 
brought their religion with them, and soon 
the English priests and English chapels 
became too small for their increasing num- 
bers. Their own priests came at their call 
and the unfailing generosity of the race 
provided means for stately churches. 

It is often thought by those outside the 
Church that Catholics are naturally clan- 
nish. In this country we are accused of 

242 



Race Prejudice and Race Hatred. 

combining, irrespective of party politics, 
in favor of Catholic candidates. If this 
were true it would be a most extraordin- 
ary phenomenon. Race prejudice and 
race hatred lie very deep in human 
nature. The Catholic Frenchman has ne 
particular love for the Catholic German, 
and when both Ireland and England were 
Catholic nations the struggle between 
them raged as fiercely as to-day. When 
the Catholic Irish poured into England 
the English Catholics did not regard 
them with a friendly eye. They were on 
opposite sides in politics, and it is said 
that once, when some prominent Catholics 
of the old Tory families opposed some 
measure of O'Connell's the great Liber- 
ator declared, with a sigh, ^^God forgive 
me for emancipating them.'' 

Such things must be, because such is 
human nature. But the Catholic Church 
guards against their evil effects by keep- 
ing politics and race hatred out of her 
sanctuar}^ She is true to the ideal of the 
Fatherhood of God and Brotherhood of 

243 



Irish and English Work Together for Church. 

Man. Inside the doors of her churches 
partisan politics must never enter; her 
pulpits are sacred to the word of God, and 
must not be defiled by the petty ambitions 
of man. Rich and poor, gentle and sim- 
ple, Whig and Tory, Republican and 
Democrat, red man and black man, white 
man and yellow, kneel before her altars, 
and all are equal — God is their Father, 
and they are brethren of Christ Jesus. 

So it was that even though the old race 
feeling might exist, Irish Catholic and 
English Catholic joined hands in building 
up the walls of Jerusalem. The little 
chapels were changed into beautiful 
churches, and like her Saviour rising from 
the tomb the Catholic Church appeared 
before the English people glorious and 
immortal— the Milk White Hind oft 
doomed to death though fated not to die. 

The result of the Irish immigration and 
of the Oxford Movement was such an ex- 
tension of the Catholic organization that 
the old methods were inadequate for the 
new needs. The normal government ol 

244 



The Organization of the Hierarchy. 

the Church is by Bishops. The Apostle 
of old went to a town and there preached 
the faith. While he remained there he 
was the teaching Church ; all that came to 
him were his disciples. When he passed 
to another place he choose some one to 
carry on his office of teaching and ruling. 
That successor was known as a Bishop, 
and he was the ruler of that particular 
flock. In course of time every consider- 
able city had a Bishop. All were prac- 
tically equal, and at the head of them was 
the Chief of the Apostles, St. Peter. 
When he died his successors took his place 
and thus we have the present system of 
government by means of the Pope and 
the Bishops. The city in which the Bishop 
dwelt was called his See or Seat. The 
territory surrounding that city is known 
as a Diocese. Several dioceses are grouped 
into a Province, and the Bishop of the 
chief dioceses is known as an Archbishop 
or Metropolitan. In Catholic times Eng- 
land consisted of two provinces, Canter- 
bury and York, and some twenty dio- 

245 



How the English Hierarchy Died Out. 

ceses. In the time of Elizabeth the Cath- 
olic Bishops were dispossessed of their 
Sees, and Protestant ministers were made 
Bishops by act of Parliament. Of course 
they were not Bishops in the true sense 
of the word, neither did they claim to be. 
Elizabeth, who was given to violent lan- 
guage, used to swear at them when they 
would not do her bidding, and remind 
them that as she had made them so also 
she could unmake them. Thus it came 
to pass that the old hierarchy disappeared 
in 1584 with the death of the last Bishop 
of Lincoln. For a period of nearly forty 
years, owing to the bitterness of the per- 
secution, the Catholics were left without 
a shepherd, until 1623, when a Vicar- 
Apostolic was appointed. A Vicar-Apos- 
tolic is a substitute for a Bishop. It is a 
temporary form of government, and bears 
about the same relation to Episcopal gov- 
ernment that a territory does to a state. In 
1688 four vicars were appointed, and the 
number was raised to eight in 1840. 
With the growth of the Church came 

246 



The Pope Restores the English Hierarchy. 

the natural desire to have the normal form 
of Church government. The old sees, it 
is true, were gone, but the same power 
that made them in the days of Augustine 
might make new sees now. From 1840 
onward the matter was agitated among the 
English Catholics. In the year 1850 
Pius IX. acceded to their wishes and re- 
stored the hierarchy. Westminster was 
made an Archbishopric, with twelve other 
dioceses. The first Archbishop, Dr. Wise- 
man, received the Cardinal's hat, and by 
a letter dated ^^Out of the Flaminian Gate 
of Rome" he announced the joyful news to 
his coreligionists. 

Of course this was a purely ecclesias- 
tical act and dealt solely with the internal 
administration of the Catholic Chur-ch. 
The Pope had nothing to say to the Es- 
tablishment, and he said nothing. But 
the politicians were at hand to make cap- 
ital out of it. Lord John Russell was in a 
very bad temper. You remember that, in 
the Established Church, Bishops are ap- 
pointed by the government. The nomi- 

247 



Lord John Russell's Durham Letter* 

nees of Lord John Russell were not 
thought well of b)^ the Tractarians, and 
they had expressed their opinions openly, 
both about the new Bishops and the min- 
ister who made them. Lord John Russell 
was anxious to get even, and, in the 
Pope's Bull re-establishing the hierarchy 
he saw his opportunity. The eve of the 
celebration of Guy Fawkes' Day he pub- 
lished an open letter to the Anglican 
Bishop of Durham. In it he evoked the 
ancient Ghosts, and spoke of ^^the inso- 
lent and insidious aggression of the Pope 
upon our Protestantism." His severest 
condemnation, however, was reserved for 
the Tractarians, whom he accused of do- 
ing the work of Rome within the Estab- 
lishment and of leading their flocks "step 
by step to the very verge of the precipice." 
The time of the letter was well chosen. 
The 5th of November is the grand Car- 
nival of the Ghosts. Lord John Russell's 
letter started the incantation, and the 
clergy of the Establishment took it up. 
The people were stirred to their depths. 

248 



Wild Outbreak Against the Church. 

The greatest of the English newspapers 
and the worst, the London Times, thun- 
dered against Rome. At a meeting of the 
vestry at Exeter, the gallant vestrymen 
expressed their sentiments as follows: 
^^Resolved, That the meeting defies the 
Pope and the devil; and that they also 
repudiate all bishops, deans, canons, 
priests or deacons who have the least 
tendency to Puseyism." 

Instead of Guy Fawkes, the Pope, Car- 
dinal Wiseman and the new Bishops 
were committed to the flames. The follow- 
ing extracts from local newspapers may 
give a faint idea of the proceedings: 

At Salisbury, on Wednesday, the 
efiigies of His Holiness the Pope, Car- 
dinal Wiseman, and the twelve Bish- 
ops were completed. Friday evening 
about 5 p. m.. Castle street was so 
densely crowded that no one could 
pass to the upper end of it. Shortly 
after, some hundreds of torches were 
lighted, which then exhibited a forest 
of heads. About half-past six His 
Holiness was brought out, amid the 

249 



Examples of Protestant Piety. 

cheering of the populace. The pro- 
cession being formed, proceeded in 
the following order: Torch-bearers, 
brass band, torch-bearers, His Holi- 
ness in full pontificals, seated in a 
huge chair; torch-bearers, Bishops, 
three abreast; torch-bearers. Cardi- 
nal \¥iseman, etc., etc. Within the 
precincts of the close the national an- 
them was played amid deafening 
cheers. At this time the scene was 
very imposing. The procession hav- 
ing paraded the city, the effigies were 
taken to the Green Croft, where, over 
a large number of faggots and barrels 
of tar, a huge platform was erected 
of timber; the effigies were placed 
thereon, and a volley of rockets sent 
up. The band played the doxology, 
and deafening cheers followed. A 
light being applied to the combusti- 
bles below, the flames rose to the plat- 
form; hundreds of fireworks were, 
then hurled at the effigies. Then fol- 
lowed the morning hymn and the 
national anthem, in which thousands 
joined. 

At Ware on Tuesday week His 
Holiness, Pio Nono, was burnt in 

250 



And Hatred of the Cardinal and the Pope. 

effigy, on an eminence overlooking the 
town. The figure was dressed in full 
pontificals, with the triple crown on its 
head, and the addition of a large pair 
of ram's horns. In the wagon was a 
donkey to represent His Excellency 
the Cardinal-Archbishop of West- 
minster. After solemnly parading the 
streets, the effigy was escorted by a 
large concourse of people to JMusley 
Hill, where it was solemnly suspended 
by the neck on a gallows erected over 
a huge pile of faggot-wood and tar 
barrels, and then burned amid the 
roars and execrations of the multi- 
tude. 

At Peckham the Pope was burned 
in effigy on Peckham Common. A van 
drawn by four horses drew up front- 
ing a house on the Green, from which 
emerged some dozen men, armed with 
various weapons, each leading a man 
attired in the surplice of a Romish 
clergyman, the latter being tumbled 
into the vehicle amid the shouts of 
several thousand persons. The next 
brought out were two athletic fellows, 
one attired as a Cardinal and the. 
other as his chaplain. A few yards 

251 



Why Protestantism Cleaves to the State. 

in advance stood an Herculean fellow 
bearing a burlesque effigy of the Pope 
and having in his hand what pur- 
ported to be the late memorable Bull. 
The procession proceeded towards 
Camberwell followed at least by 
10,000 persons. It was hailed in its 
progress through the various streets 
wi^h the loudest acclamations, and 
cries of "No Popery!" "Hurrah for 
the Queen!" "No foreign priesthood!" 
etc., etc. 

Those demonstrations did not hurt any 
one and they pleased the free born Briton. 
But more dangerous measures were pre- 
paring. It is often brought as a charge 
against the Catholic Church that she seeks 
a union with the State. It is said, es- 
pecially in America, that Catholics are 
plotting to procure an establishment of re- 
ligion. Nothing could be farther from the 
truth. The Church, it is true, does not 
wish to be at war with the State, because 
such hostility is opposed to the interest of 
the people; but at the same time she will 
never consent to become a mere depart- 

252 



Demands of Preachers for Persecution. 

ment of the State. She has her own sphere 
in the spiritual world, and she derives her 
power not from the State but from her 
Founder. Now, on the contrary, an exam- 
ination of historical facts will show us that 
the sects which are so ready to accuse us 
of invoking State aid, are themselves the 
first to call in the temporal arm when they 
consider their privileges in danger. Hence 
all those societies for disfranchising Cath- 
olics; hence all those persecuting laws in 
the past, and all these propositions for in- 
vidious legislation now; hence mob vio- 
lence; hence those appeals to legislatures, 
to governments, to ministers of State. 

True to its instincts, the Established 
Church of England immediately demanded 
repressive measures. The power of Par- 
liament was invoked. The clergy of 
Middlesex lifted up their voices and 
called for aid: 

We, therefore, feel it our bounden 
duty at this unprecedented crisis to 
protest against this usurpation of au- 
thority by a foreign prelate, and to 

253 



From the Highest Anglican Clerics. 

invite the co-operation of our lay 
brethren in prevailing on Her Majes- 
ty's government, and if necessary on 
the legislature, to adopt such meas- 
ures as shall cause this schismatic and 
intrusive step to be retraced, and to 
prevent those evil consequences to our 
national institutions which it must 
otherwise produce. 

The Archdeacon of London had no 
scruple, in the middle of the nineteenth 
century, of advocating a return to the pe- 
nal enactments of William of Orange. He 
said in an address to the clergy: 

If these evils are to be avoided it 
must be, under God's blessing, by a 
combination scarcely less powerful 
and united than that which, in 1688, 
prevented James U. from carrying 
into effect his wishes for the conver- 
sion of England to Popery. That our 
Bishops will, both in and out of Par- 
liament, do their duty in endeavoring 
to deliver our Protestant country 
from Papal aggression we cannot 
doubt 

The London Times, encouraged by the 

254 



And Most Powerful Organs of Press. 

outcry, prophesied that the new hierarchy 
would soon be ended. Commenting on a 
pastoral letter of Dr. UUathorne, one of 
the new Bishops, it said: 

Let Dr. Ullathorne imagine, if he 
can, on the faith of history, which he 
dare not quote, that the foundations 
of his episcopal chair will only be 
consolidated by the interference of the 
State. We tell him that the days of 
his episcopate are numbered, and that 
it is not because his chair is built up- 
on a rock, but merely because his 
appointment has been adroitly made 
during the recess of Parliament, that 
he is in the enjoyment of that seat, 
the foundations of which he dreams 
are eternal; and that, though it be 
not in the power of our Legislature 
to prevent him from having been the 
first Roman Catholic Bishop of Bir- 
mingham, it will, most assuredly, be 
their will, and completely in their 
power, to provide that he shall be the 
last. 

It is no wonder that such editorials as 
that should fire the Anglican preachers to 

255 



Death the Only Remedy for Confession. 

frenzy. One got into his pulpit and 
howled : 

I would make it a capital offense to 
administer the Confession in this 
country. Transportation would not 
satisfy me, for that would merely 
transfer the evil from one part of the 
world to the other. Capital punish- 
m'ent alone would satisfy me. Death 
alone would prevent the evil. That is 
my sober conviction. 

And so the storm raged. Newman has 
described it so humorously and yet so truly 
that I cannot help quoting his words: 

Heresy, and skepticism, and infi- 
delity, and fanaticism, may challenge 
the Establishment in vain; but fling 
upon the gale the faintest whisper of 
Catholicism, and it recognizes by in- 
stinct the presence of its connatural 
foe. Forthwith, as during the last 
year, the atmosphere is tremulous 
with agitation, and discharges its vi- 
brations far and wide. A movement 
is in birth which has no natural crisis 
or resolution. Spontaneously the bells 
of the steeples begin to sound. Not 

256 



Newman Describes the Agitation. 

by an act of volition, but by a sort of 
mechanical impulse, bishop and dean, 
archdeacon and canon, rector and cu- 
rate, one after another, each on his 
high tower, ojff they set swinging and 
booming, toiling and chiming, with 
nervous intenseness, and thickening 
emotion, and deepening volume, the 
old ding-dong which has scared town 
and country this weary time; tolling 
and chiming away, jingling and clam- 
oring and ringing the changes on their 
poor half-dozen notes, all about ^^the 
Popish aggression," ^^insolent and in- 
sidious," "insidious and insolent," "in- 
solent and atrocious," "atrocious and 
insolent," "atrocious, insolent and un- 
grateful," "ungrateful, insolent and 
atrocious," "foul and offensive," "pes- 
tilent and horrid," "subtle and un- 
holy," "audacious and revolting," 
"contemptible and shameless," "ma- 
lignant," "frightful," "mad," "mere- 
tricious," — bobs (I think the ringers 
call them), bobs, and bobs-royal, and 
triple-bobs-majors, and grandsires — 
to the extent of their compass and the 
fuJl ring of their metal, in honor of 
Queen Bess, and to the confusion of 

257 



The Ecclesiastical Titles Act. 

the Holy Father and the Princes of 
the Church. — ''Present Position of 
Catholics/^ a. 

But the fanatics were not to have It all 
their own way. The days had passed when 
Catholics could be abused and then hanged 
if they dared answer back. The Catholic 
leaders were able to defend themselves in 
print, and the increase in the Catholic 
population in the large cities made it im- 
politic for the pious mob to repeat the 
scenes of the Gordon Riot. The Tract- 
arians, too, were not afraid to speak out, 
and soon Lord John Russell was convinced 
he had made a mistake. It was well 
known that he was very anxious to find a 
w^ay out of the difficulty, and one of the 
comic journals of the time pictured him 
as a little boy who had chalked ^^No 
Popery" on Cardinal Wiseman's door and 
was running away afraid of being caught 

But it was now too late to back down, 
and when Parliament met in February, 
1851, a bill was introduced making it ille- 
gal for Catholic priests to assume eccle- 

258 



Killed by Courage of John McHale, 

siastical titles in the United Kingdom. It 
was called the Ecclesiasticals Titles Bill, 
and became a law in July. One of the 
strongest speeches made against it came 
from Gladstone, who said ^^It is hostile to 
the institutions of the country, more es- 
pecially to its established religion, be- 
cause it would teach us to rely on other 
support than that of the spiritual strength 
and vitality which alone can give it vigor.''' 

The Act made it unlawful for any Cath- 
olic Bishop to take the name of a place in 
Great Britain as his title. Scarcely was it 
passed when John McHale wrote a public 
letter to the Prime Minister, signing him- 
self John, Archbishop of Tuam. The let- 
ter killed the Act. It was never put in 
force, and, in 1871, was quietly repealed. 
Thus was laid the Ghost of a Name. 

But throughout the country the agita- 
tion continued. We know, by experience^ 
what such an agitation means. The 
preachers abuse the Pope and the Church; 
fallen wretches, known as ex-priests, are 
trotted around to retail their filth to the 

259 



Newman and the ex-Priest Achilli. 

extreme Protestants, who are willing to 
believe anything vile. Such an agitation 
raged in England in 1850 and 1851. Then, 
as now, there were feeble-minded Catho- 
lics, who deprecated all noise and tumult, 
and who thought that the Pope would have 
done better to let well enough alone. They 
had been so long in chains that the iron 
had entered into their souls. 

But manlier councils prevailed in Eng- 
land. Newman had become a priest after 
his conversion, and was living in Birming- 
ham. In the height of the agitation he 
delivered those wonderful lectures, entitled 
^The Present Position of Catholics in 
England." In them he described the great 
Protestant Tradition and tore the veil from 
the ignorance and the prejudice which are 
the life of the Protestant idea of Catholics. 
In one of his lectures he dealt with a cer- 
tain Achilli, an Italian ex-priest, who 
was touring the country exposing the 
iniquities of Rome. Achilli was a man of 
infamous life, and Newman used him as 
an illustration of the sources from which 

260 



Cost in Damages by Prejudiced Court. 

the Protestant Tradition derives its knowl- 
edge of the Catholic faith. In a passage, 
which is a masterpiece of invective, he de- 
scribed Achilli's career. Achilli brought 
an action for libel. Newman produced a 
cloud of witnesses and proved all his 
charges; but he was dealing with a British 
Protestant jury, in a season of anti-Catholic 
excitement. The Chief Justice, Lord 
Campbell, delivered a most unfair charge, 
and the jury brought in a verdict that the 
libel had not been justified. The general 
impression, even of non-Catholics, was that 
gross injustice was done to Newman. 
Achilli disappeared, and the costs of the 
trial, which amounted to over $60,000, 
were paid by a public subscription, taken 
up all over the world. But the agitation 
was killed. The ex-priest business was 
ruined. The sunlight had touched the 
Ghost, and lo, it was no more. 

I have now traced the history of the 
Catholic Church in England from the days 
of the Reformation to our own time. We 
have seen the growth of the English 

261 



The Infallibility of the Pope. 

Protestant Tradition and we are watching 
its decay. The Ecclesiastical Titles Bill 
was the last legal attempt to restrain the 
free exercise of the Catholic religion. 

But there was one other agitation against 
the Church, which, for the sake of com- 
pleteness, deserves attention. You know 
the Church is a society, and, as a society, 
she must have a government and a consti- 
tution. That government and that consti- 
tution were given her by Jesus Christ Him- 
self. Now it often happens, as here in the 
United States, the question of the meaning 
of the Constitution comes up : Is such and 
such a provision constitutional? Those 
questions go through the courts, and are 
finally settled by our Supreme Court. In 
the Church the question arises : Is such and 
such doctrine revealed by Christ? This 
question may be discussed for a time, but 
is finally settled by the Supreme Court, 
namely, the Pope. The decision is not 
only final, but infallible, because the Holy 
Ghost is always with the Church to guard 
it from error. 

262 



Gladstone and the Irish University. 

Catholics had always explicitly held 
that the Church — that is to say, the whole 
society, made up of head and body — was in- 
fallible when deciding a question of faith 
and morals. They had implicitly believed 
that the head of the Church enjoyed this 
privilege when speaking as the supreme 
teacher of Christendom. This latter ques- 
tion, however, began to be discussed, and it 
became necessary to define it explicitly. 
Therefore, the whole Church met in the 
Vatican Council of 1870, and promulgated 
the decision that in matters of faith and 
morals the official teaching of the Pope 
was infallible. 

This added no new doctrine to the old 
faith; no more than a decision of our Su- 
preme Court adds a new article to our 
Constitution. As it dealt not with politics, 
not with history, not with science, not with 
art, but with religion, no one could im- 
agine that it would be considered a menace 
to the British Constitution. But all things 
are possible to the disappointed politician. 
Gladstone had deserved well of the Cath- 

263 



Hh Letter on the Vatican Decrees. 

olic community and of the Irish people. 
He had spoken against the Ecclesiastical 
Titles Bill and had disestablished the 
Protestant Church in Ireland. However, 
like many more men he was obstinate, and 
thought he knew better than the Irish what 
was good for them. One of the chief griev- 
ances of that country was the university 
question. The Protestants had two uni- 
versities, well endowed, and the Catholics 
had none. Gladstone determined to rem- 
edy that grievance. Now it stands to rea- 
son that if a statesman wishes to provide a 
university for Catholics he should consult 
the wishes of Catholics. This Gladstone 
unfortunately would not do, and the result 
was that the Irish Bishops were compelled 
to reject his scheme. As a consequence he 
was defeated in Parliament, and went out 
of office. 

In 1874 he created a sensation by pub- 
lishing a pamphlet entitled, "The Vatican 
Decrees in Their Bearing on Civil Alle- 
giance." In this pamphlet he contended 
that Catholics could not be good citizens, 

264 



His Withdrawal of the Accusation. 

because of their belief in the infallibility 
of the Pope. No fewer than twenty-one 
pamphlets were published in reply, and in 
a second booklet he practically withdrew 
his accusation: 

I cannot but say that the immedi- 
ate purpose of my appeal has been 
attained, in so far that the loyalty of 
our Roman Catholic fellow subjects 
in the mass remains untainted and 
secure. 

Thus passed the last of the Ghosts. In 
the short time since emancipation the 
Catholic Church has shown that she is 
able to hold her own. She met those who 
calumniated her, boldly, and she demon- 
strated that she was not afraid of inves- 
tigation. This is the result of free discus- 
sion. We may not convince those who 
are opposed to us, but we can remove prej- 
udices and misconceptions. When men 
look into our eyes and hear our voice they 
cannot believe us the bloodthirsty and cruel 
tyrants which the Protestant Tradition 
pictures us to be. Thus though they may 

265 



Influence of the Oxford Movement. 

Still remain in their own creed they are 
tolerant of ours. No designing politician 
can convince them that we are plotting 
against their rights. They know us. They 
can ask us to our faces. They can come 
into our churches and examine our institu- 
tions from garret to cellar, and they can 
judge for themselves. Such has been the 
effect of toleration in England. Of course 
its work is not complete. Bigotry and 
credulity still live; but bigotry is a beaten 
cause, and the bigots know it. 

Another reason for the passing of the 
Ghosts is to be found in the success of 
the Oxford Movement, even within the 

Establishment. Formerlv a small minor- 

•J 

ity, the ritualists are now in the majority. 
They are teaching the old Catholic doc- 
trines to the people, and as the Catholic 
doctrines spread, hostility to Catholicism 
is dying out. In half a century the Angli- 
can Church has sprung back three hun- 
dred years. She is now nearly in the same 
position, as regards doctrine, as she was in 
the reign of Henry VIII., when nothing 

266 



A Steady Stream of Conversions. 

separated her from Rome but the headship 
of the Pope. 

That the Anglican Church, as a Church, 
will return to the unity of Christendom is, 
of course, more than any man can say. 
When we consider what she was in the be- 
ginning of the century, and what she is 
now, anything is possible. But she is a 
great nursery of conversions. When men 
embrace Catholic teaching they must be 
logical. They are led to the Pope. A 
steady stream of conversions has set toward 
the Catholic Church, and in England 
alone as many as a thousand are received 
into the one Fold each month. 

This brings me to the end of the English 
Ghosts. At the next lecture we will ex- 
amine the historv of our own Ghosts. It 
has been hard and unpleasant to rake up 
those old memories. It is not a grateful 
task to relate the mistakes of the past, but 
from them we learn how to avoid similar 
mistakes now. We accuse no one now liv- 
ing of the responsibility for those mistakes. 
When Catholics recount the persecution 

267 



Catholics Should Study Their Creed. 

of their fathers in the faith by the Protes- 
tants they do not accuse their Protestant 
brethren of being desirous to repeat those 
atrocities, and they are justly indignant 
when some preacher reciting the story of 
the persecution of Protestants by Catholics 
declares that all Catholics would burn, 
roast and hang heretics now if they got the 
chance. 

We have examined the history of those 
times for a special purpose, namely, to 
find out how the suspicion and distrust 
of Catholicism which we find among Eng- 
lish speaking Protestants originated. We 
find that suspicion and distrust were fed on 
Ghosts. We find that causeless hatred of 
the Church was inculcated for political 
reasons among the English people, and we 
have read the sad, though at times ludi- 
crous effects produced by that dread. To 
the Catholic this study brings home the 
truth that his religion is something worth 
knowing and worth defending. He is face 
to face with three centuries of misrepresen- 
tation, and the tradition of three centuries 

268 



Because It Has Been So Misrepresented. 

is not dissipated in a day. To the non- 
Catholic the only appeal we make is: 
Examine. In these lectures I have not 
explained Catholic doctrine; I have not 
offered arguments for Catholic dogma. I 
have simply tried to find out why it is that 
Protestants are afraid of the Catholic 
Church and why they will not inquire into 
her claims. I have tried to show by the 
facts of history how Catholicism was car- 
icatured for three centuries and denied fair 
play. 1 have tried to explain how our non- 
Catholic brethren see Ghosts instead of 
reality. In speaking of those times I may 
have used harsh language, but no harsher 
than good Protestants themselves are ac- 
customed to use. In speaking of our sep- 
arated brethren to-day, I hope I have used 
no expression which would give reasonable 
grounds for offense. To those, of course, 
who are going to be offended with cause 
or without it, I have no apology to offer. 
But to those who believe in truth, who be- 
lieve that God gave them their reason to 
find out His will, I say: Inquire. Study 

269 



Ask of Protestants Only to Inquire. 

our claims. Understand our doctrine. Hear 
what we have to say for ourselves. Do 
not depend on second-hand information, 
but find out for vourself. This is all we 
ask, and this we believe will be sufficient. 



270 



VI -ANTI^CATHOLIC MOVE- 
MENTS IN NORTH AMERICA. 

THE object of the Catholic Truth 
Society is to set forth the teachings 
and history of the Catholic Church 
from the Catholic standpoint. As we may 
be reasonably supposed to know best what 
our teachings mean, it is only right that 
those who wish to examine our teachings 
should learn them from us. It is also a 
true and tried maxim that one story is good 
until another is told; therefore, those who 
have all their lives been hearing our his- 
tory as recorded by Protestants, should, in 
order to form a correct judgment, listen to 
w^hat we have to say for our own deeds and 
for the deeds of our forefathers in the 
faith. 

We find, however, when we approach 
non-Catholics, that they have already 
strong prejudices concerning the Church 
and her teachings. Such prejudices are in- 
evitable. We should not fear them were 

271 



English Import Hatred of Popery. 

they not accompanied by an indisposition 
to hear us, and a deep-rooted aversion to 
examine our claims. In order to under- 
stand the nature of this aversion, we have 
been studying the history of England in as 
far as it relates to Catholics during the past 
three hundred years. As the original col- 
onies which formed this republic were 
mainly of English origin, such study was 
necessary. We found that during that 
period Catholicism was systematically mis- 
represented to the English people. We 
found that all manner of slanders and cal- 
umny was circulated against us. We found 
how the Ghosts had their origin, and we 
learned how thoroughly their work was 
done. 

When men change their country they do 
not change their temper. The English col- 
onists brought to these shores the dread 
and hatred of Popery which they had 
learned at home. It is now our task in this, 
the last lecture of the series, to study the 
fate of the Ghosts in this country. To 
accomplis.h it in anything like a proper 

272 



Colonies Either Prelatist or Puritan. 

manner would require as many lectures 
as have been already delivered. I intend 
now to treat the subject lightly and briefly. 
It will be the duty of the Catholic Truth 
Society in future lectures, tracts and pam- 
phlets to deal more extensively with hap- 
penings which are of the greatest interest 
to us because they bear on our character 
as citizens and because they explain the 
nature and cause of that prejudice, to 
counteract which the Catholic Truth 
Society has been established. 

The seventeenth century saw the settle- 
ment of the original thirteen colonies, 
with the exception of Georgia. You re- 
member that I have described the division 
of English Protestantism into two great 
parties or factions — the extreme Protes- 
tants, or the Puritans, and the moderate 
Protestants, or the Episcopalians. Speak- 
ing generally, the Puritans settled along 
the Northern seaboard, while the Estab- 
lished Church was planted in the South. 
All New England was Puritan; Virginia 
was strongly Episcopalian. 

273 



Peculiar Ideas of Religious Liberty. 

It would be an unnecessary and un- 
grateful task to dilate on the intolerance 
of the Puritan and Cavalier. The Puri- 
tans had been persecuted by the State 
Church in England, and they went into the 
wilderness to found a commonwealth 
where they could enjoy freedom of wor- 
ship. They speedily showed, however, that 
they meant freedom for themselves and for 
their own worship alone. Hardly had they 
landed, when they exiled Episcopalians 
w^ho worshipped according to the Book of 
Common Prayer. Not so long afterward 
Roger Williams was banished because of 
his tolerant sentiments. Mrs. Anne 
Hutchinson, the mother of all the New 
England Women Righters, was declared 
unfit for the society of Christians. The 
unfortunate Quakers were sentenced, after 
the first conviction, to lose one ear; after 
a second conviction, to lose the other ear, 
and after the third conviction to have the 
tongue bored with a red-hot iron. At 
last, despairing of silencing them, the 
Puritans ordered them to leave the colony 

274 



French Colonists and Jesuit Missions. 

under penalty of death. Several, including 
a woman, were hanged. 

Encouraged by such laws and such ex- 
amples it is not surprising that Catholics 
gave New England a wide berth. There 
was none to be found in any of the colo- 
nies in that part of the world, and it might 
be supposed that the Ghosts would fall 
into innocuous desuetude. But no. North 
and west of New England were the 
French; the French were Catholics, and 
as often as not England was at war with 
France. Among the Indian tribes the 
Jesuits and other religious orders were la- 
boring with a zeal which is to this day the 
wonder of the world. They crossed des- 
erts, overcame the mountains, paddled in 
their birch canoes on unnamed rivers, in 
cold and hunger and nakedness they 
sought souls. They lived as the Indians 
lived and they died with their converts. 
Some of them returned to Europe and 
showed scarred and mutilated stumps 
where hands had once been, as their testi- 
mony to the faith. They were men of peace, 

275 



Jesuits Charged With Stirring Up Indians. 

not men of war. Yet when the political 
needs of the French government stirred 
up the Indians against the English, just as 
the political needs of the English govern- 
ment stirred up the Indians against the 
French, the cry went up that the Jesuits 
were at the bottom of it. The cry was 
false. The great American historians of 
Protestant belief acknowledge that the 
missionaries always stood for peace and 
colonial neutrality. But the cry served the 
purpose. The Puritan pulpits resounded 
with the old slogan against Rome^ and the 
young Americans who had never seen a 
Catholic, or read a Catholic book, or 
heard of a Catholic dogma were educated 
in the orthodox belief of the Ghosts. In 
Old England the Ghost was a Jesuit be- 
hind the Gunpowder Plotters — in New 
England the Ghost was a Jesuit behind a 
painted Indian with scalping knife and 
tomahawk. 

Virginia was the typical southern col- 
ony. It was Royalist to the core, and the 
Established Church of England was also 

276 



Virginia a Preserve for Anglicans. 

the Established Church of Virginia. In 
its foundation "the exclusion of Roman 
Catholics had been avowed as a special 
object, and the statutes of its legislature 
as well as the commands of the sovereign 
aimed at a perpetual religious uniform- 
ity." All the oaths and laws with which 
Catholics were plagued in the old country- 
obtained in the new. Catholics, however, 
were not alone. The same measure of per- 
secution and disability which the Puritans 
meted to the Episcopalians in Massachu- 
setts, the Episcopalians meted to the Puri- 
tans in Virginia. The whole State was 
parceled out into parishes, and a tax on to- 
bacco levied for the support of the min- 
ister. A fine of the same currency was 
imposed on all who would not attend the 
Anglican church on Sunday. 

As the persecuted Puritans had looked 
to the land beyond the sea as an asylum 
from the intolerance of their Protestant 
brethren, so the persecuted Catholics 
sought a refuge from the bigotry of Puri- 
tan and Episcopalian alike. Sir George 

277 



Lord Baltimore Pioneer of Religious Liberty, 

Calvert was raised in the Anglican 
Church, but a study of the grounds of the 
Reformation brought him back to the faith 
of his fathers. This was in 1617, a time 
when no worldly prospects invited such a 
step. In accordance with the Penal Laws, 
he at once resigned his political offices; 
but James I., who respected him highly, 
elevated him to the Irish peerage under 
the title of Lord Baltimore. The sad condi- 
tion of his coreligionists in England ap- 
pealed to him, and he cast about for a plan 
of relief. Seeing no hope at home he 
turned his thoughts to America, and in 
1622 he obtained a patent for Newfound- 
land. There he planted a colony and 
called it Avalon, in memory of the spot 
where Christianity had been introduced 
into Britain. In this colony he established 
full religious toleration, and provided 
priests for the Catholics and a preacher for 
the Protestants. But the enterprise did not 
succeed. The preacher complained to the 
home government that Lord Baltimore al- 
lowed Mass to be said, the climate was too 

278 



Charter for Colony of Maryland. 

inhospitable, and the French were hostile. 
The attempt was abandoned. Lord Balti- 
more took as many of the colonists as 
would follow him and sailed for Virginia. 
Here, however, he was refused hospitality. 
The authorities knew he was a Catholic; 
they tendered him the Oath of Supremacy, 
which they knew he could not take, and 
thus the father of religious toleration on 
this continent was denied the ordinary 
courtesies of humanity from those whose 
coreligionists he had treated as fairly as 
the members of the household of his own 
faith. Returning to England he applied 
for the country lying north of the Potomac, 
as a site for a colony. The application was 
granted, but before the necessary formali- 
ties were finished he died. Of him Ban- 
croft says : 

Calvert deserves to be ranked 
among the most wise and benevolent 
lawgivers of all ages. He was the 
first in the history of the Christian 
world to seek for religious security 
and peace by the practice of justice 

279 



Toleration in Practice From Beginning. 

and not by the exercise of power; to 
plan the establishment of popular in- 
stitutions, with the enjoyment of lib- 
erty of conscience; to advance the 
career of civilization by recognizing 
the rightful equality of all Christian 
sects. The asylum of Papists was the 
spot where, in a remote corner of the 
world, on the banks of rivers which, 
as yet, had hardly been explored, the 
mild forbearance of a proprietary 
adopted religious freedom as the basis 
of the state. 

His son, the second Lord Baltimore, 
received the charter, which was one of the 
most liberal ever issued by the British 
Crown. The new colony was to be called 
Maryland. The Lord Proprietor was 
invested with all legislative and executive 
power. 

In 1633 two vessels, called the Ark and 
the Dove, left England for Maryland. 
They arrived at the mouth of the Potomac, 
March 25, 1634. Warned by his father's 
troubles with the preacher in Newfound- 
land, Lord Baltimore informed the colo- 

280 



opposition From Bigots in Virginia. 

nists that he did not intend to supply them 
with clergymen. Two Jesuits went with 
the expedition as gentlemen adventurers 
and took their chances with the others. 
There were a few Protestants in the com- 
pany, but no preacher. The vast majority 
was Catholic. 

The foundation of a Catholic State so 
close to Virginia roused the bigots of that 
province. The Jesuits were on their bor- 
ders, and the country was not safe. 
Though the Catholics of Maryland gave 
every man freedom of worship, Virginia 
could not profit by the example, and in 
1 641 a special law was passed which pro- 
hibited any Papist from holding office 
under the penalty of a thousand pounds of 
tobacco. 

The troubles in England between the 
King and the Parliament had their effects 
in Maryland. In 1646 the colony was in- 
vaded from Virginia and the Jesuits were 
thrown into irons and sent to London. 
Not a priest was left in the land. The 
following year, however, the Lord Pro- 

281 



Formal Toleration Law of 1649. 

prietor re-established his authority. Up 
to this, toleration was the practice of the 
colony. The doings of the Virginians and 
the increasing numbers of the Protestants 
showed the Catholics the necessity of mak- 
ing some legal provision for themselves. 
They had striven to do, rather than to talk. 
They had not uttered many high-sounding 
phrases about liberty of conscience, but 
they had given liberty of conscience. The 
persecuted Puritans of Virginia and the 
persecuted Prelatists from Massachusetts 
found at their hands a welcome and equal 
rights. But signs were not wanting that 
bigotry might prove stronger than grati- 
tude, and the Catholics determined to 
place on the statute book, as an everlast- 
ing memorial, their determination to up- 
hold toleration. This was the law of 1649, 
the day star of religious freedom on this 
continent, the measure by which, in after 
time, a great nation, made up of many 
peoples and many faiths, was to solve a 
question which had filled Christendom 
with misery and blood. 

282 



Destroyed Under William of Orange. 

But the bigots were not to be deterred 
from their work by legislative enactments. 
After the establishment of the Common- 
wealth, the Commissioners therefor en- 
tered Maryland and called an assembly 
from which all Catholics were excluded. 
The Protestants who sat in that assembly 
were beneficiaries of the Catholics. They 
had been given freedom of worship when 
Catholics were in the majority; yet now 
when they had power they passed a law 
that ^^none who profess and exercise the 
Popish, commonly called the Roman Cath- 
olic, religion can be protected in this 
province by the laws of England, but are 
to be restrained from the exercise thereof." 

In England, however. Lord Baltimore, 
the proprietor, had sufficient influence to 
have the acts of the Commission set aside 
and his own authority re-established. The 
Toleration Law of 1649 therefore went 
into force once more, and Maryland en- 
joyed religious liberty until the deposition 
of Jam.es IL and the accession of William 
of Orange. As in England this event be- 

283 



Persecution of Catholics in Maryland. 

gan a new period of persecution, so in 
America it marked the end of toleration. 
Here, for the first time, as far as I have 
been able to discover, we meet v^ith the 
magic words, ^Trotestant Association/' 
The bigots of Maryland banded themselves 
into an association ^^for the defense of the 
Protestant religion," and in an address to 
King William denounced the influence of 
Jesuits, the prevalence of Popish idolatry, 
the connivance by the government at 
murders of Protestants, and the danger 
from plots with the French and Indians. 
William of Orange seized the opportu- 
nity thus offered him. Baltimore was de- 
prived of his rights. Maryland was made 
a Royal Colony. Catholics were disfran- 
chised. The Episcopalian sect was set up 
as the Established Church of Maryland. 
The colony was divided into parishes. All 
the people were taxed for the building 
of Episcopalian churches, which were 
nearly always empty, and for the support 
of Episcopalian preachers, who were 
nearly always full. In 1697 a pestilence 

284 



Persecution in Other Colonies. 

passed through the land. Then, as now, 
the Catholic priests braved the terrors of 
disease and death to minister to the 
stricken. An Episcopalian preacher de- 
manded that the legislature should inter- 
fere to restrain such Popish presumption. 

During the eighteenth century, new and 
more ferocious laws were added. Burden 
after burden was heaped upon the Catho- 
lics, until, at last, only twenty-five years 
before our Revolution, they were driven 
in despair to appeal to the British throne. 
All this was done in the first asylum of 
religious liberty, done to those who had 
founded that asylum; done by men who 
boasted of their enlightened creed and 
their freedom from the superstitions of 
Rome. 

In the other colonies the accession of 
William of Orange was also the signal for 
the outbreak of persecution. Of course 
there were no Catholics in New England 
and none in the Carolinas or Georgia; but 
in New York the ancient Ghosts held high 
revelry. In 1700 an Act was passed im- 

285 



Especially Virulent in New York. 

prisoning or banishing all priests, dis- 
franchising Catholics and sentencing to 
death any priest who escaped from prison. 
To harbor a priest was to incur a fine of 
two hundred and fifty pounds and stand in 
the pillory three days. The preamble to 
this Act recited that, ^^Whereas, divers 
Jesuits, priests and Popish missionaries 
have of late come, and for some time have 
had their residence in remote parts of the 
province, who, by their wicked and subtle 
insinuations, industriously labor to de- 
bauch, seduce and withdraw the Indians 
from due obedience to His Most Sacred 
Majesty, and to excite and stir them to se- 
dition, rebellion and open hostility against 
His Majesty's government, etc." It was 
the same old Ghost that had terrified 
England so long. It was as successful now 
in terrifying the colonists. In 1741 a few 
negro slaves made a sedition in New 
York, and the rumors flew fast that a con- 
spiracy was on foot to massacre the whites 
and burn the city. An unfortunate Episco- 
palian clergyman was accused of being a 

286 



The Foundation of Pennsylvania. 

Jesuit in disguise, was arrested, tried, con- 
victed and hanged. There is no doubt that 
he was what he claimed to be — a Protes- 
tant preacher — but such was the popular 
excitement that the jury took only fifteen 
minutes to find him guilty of being a 
Catholic. 

In this dreary waste of intolerance there 
was one place where Catholics and Protes- 
tants found peace. In 1682 William Penn 
had founded the Colony of Pennsylvania. 
He belonged to the Quaker community. 
Those inoffensive people had suffered se- 
verely from Puritan and Prelatist alike. 
Penn built this new State on the founda- 
tions of religious liberty, and it is the 
glory of the Quakers that while to the 
north and to the south of them bigotry 
reigned unchecked, within their borders 
men's consciences were free. It is true 
there were ill-disposed men in Pennsylva- 
nia who complained to the home govern- 
ment of the tolerance of the colony, but 
Penn's influence was strong enough to set 
them at nought. The protection which 

287 



The Treaty of Paris and the Quebec Act. 

Lord Baltimore's colonists had given to 
the Quaker exiles from Massachusetts and 
Virginia was nobly repaid by the Quakers 
of Pennsylvania. 

By the Treaty of Paris, in 1763, France 
surrendered Canada to the British 
Crown. It was stipulated that the people 
should enjoy the use of the French lan- 
guage and French laws and that their re- 
ligion should not be molested. Now, west 
of the English colonies and between the 
Ohio and the Mississippi was a vast stretch 
of country known then as the Northwest 
Territory, and now occupied by the States 
of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and 
Wisconsin. All this land was claimed by 
the older States under their charters. 
When those charters were given no one 
had any idea of the width of the continent, 
and the grants usually ran from ocean to 
ocean. In accordance with the Treaty of 
Paris the English Parliament enacted a 
law in 1774 known as the Quebec Act. By 
that Act the privileges of the Canadians 
were established and the Northwest Terri- 

288 



First American Congress Protests. 

tory was placed under the government of 
Quebec. The Act raised a storm both in 
England and in the Colonies. Already 
the troubles with the government were 
beginning, and the First American Con- 
gress had convened in Philadelphia. 
Among the grievances of the Colonies the 
Quebec Act was set forth, and in an ad- 
dress to the people of Great Britain, Sep- 
tember, 1774, the representatives said: 
"We think that the legislature of Great 
Britain is not authorized by the Constitu- 
tion to establish a religion fraught with 
sanguinary and impious tenets, and to 
erect an arbitrary form of government in 
any quarter of the globe. By this the Do- 
minion of Canada is extended, modeled 
and governed, as that, being disunited 
from us, detached from our interests by 
civil as well as religious prejudices, that 
by their numbers are daily swelling with 
Catholic emigrants from Europe, they 
might become formidable to us, and on 
occasion be fit instruments in the hands of 
power to reduce the ancient free Protes- 

289 



War With England Destroys Bigotry. 

tant colonies to the same state of slavery 
with themselves." The author of the ad- 
dress was John Jay, a lawyer, with whom 
anti-Catholicism was a mania. A similar 
address was sent to the colonies, and it 
seemed as if the growing struggle for in- 
dependence were to be disgraced by big- 
otry. But God ruled otherwise. The time 
had come when the designs of Lord Balti- 
more were to find fruition, and the mus- 
tard seed planted by Catholic hands and 
watered by Catholic tears was to grow 
into a mighty tree, offering shelter to the 
persecuted of every land. 

Events rapidly drove the colonists to a 
complete break with England. "If we 
do not hang together," said one of the 
signers of the Declaration of Independ- 
ence, "we shall all hang separately." The 
common cause, the common enthusiasm, 
broke down the barriers of religious intol- 
erance. Catholics and Protestants stood 
shoulder to shoulder against English tyr- 
anny, and between men who stand 
shoulder to shoulder for freedom, no 

290 



Influence of Irish in Revolution. 

Ghosts can come. The topic of religious 
liberty soon became a common subject of 
discussion. Many of the States caught 
the new spirit, and their Constitutions, 
adopted after the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, removed former restrictions on 
Catholics and admitted them to citizenship. 
The kindly feeling toward Catholics 
was intensified by the aid received from 
Catholic sources during the war. In 1776 
the House of Lords appointed a committee 
to inquire into the American War. Jo- 
seph Galloway, an officer in high com- 
mand on the Royalist side, testified that 
one-half the troops in the service of Con- 
gress were natives of Ireland, one-fourth 
natives of England and Scotland, and one- 
fourth natives of America. Before the 
same committee, Major-General Robert- 
son stated that he had been informed by 
General Lee that half the rebel army came 
from Ireland. Of course I do not claim 
that all the Irish were Catholics. Still, 
making all the allowances necessary, the 
number of Catholics must have been very 

291 



Influence of Catholic Nations. 

large. Archbishop Carroll was able to 
say in a public letter concerning his co- 
religionists : ^Their blood flowed as 
freely, in proportion to their numbers, to 
cement the fabric of independence as that 
of any of their fellow-citizens. They con- 
curred with perhaps greater unanimity 
than any other body of men, in recom- 
mending and promoting that government 
from whose influence America anticipates 
all the blessings of justice, peace, plenty, 
good order, civil and religious liberty." 
The early struggles of America were 
aided by two Catholic countries, France 
and Spain. Catholic officers came from 
Ireland, France and Poland, and offered 
their swords on the altar of liberty. The 
first diplomatic circle was made up of rep- 
resentatives from Catholic powers, and on 
great national occasions solemn Church 
services, attended by the ambassadors, the 
Federal authorities, and high military of- 
ficers familiarized the people with the 
Catholic liturgy. French fleets and 
French regiments brought chaplains with 

292 



Benedict Arnold on No Popery. 

them, and the Puritans of Massachusetts 
learned with surprise that priests did not 
wear horns, and the Prelatists of Virginia 
were disabused of their solemn conviction 
that Jesuits had cloven hoofs and forked 
tails. The Tories, or the friends of Eng- 
land, used this toleration of Catholics as 
an argument against the popular move- 
ment. In 1780, the traitor, Benedict Ar- 
nold, issued a proclamation to the Conti- 
nental Army, in which he strove to raise 
the no-Popery Ghost: 

Should the parent nation cease her 
exertions to deliver you, what security 
remains to you for the enjoyment of 
the consolations of that religion for 
which your fathers braved the ocean, 
the heathen and the wilderness? Do 
you know that the eye that guides this 
pen lately saw your mean and profli- 
gate Congress at Mass for the soul of 
a Roman Catholic in Purgatory, and 
participating in the rites of a Church, 
against whose anti-Christian corrup- 
tion your pious ancestors would have 
witnessed with their blood? 

293 



The Commission to French Canada. 

It was too late then to stir hatred be- 
tween men who had tried their friendship 
on the battlefield. In another direction, 
however, the English government was 
more successful. You will remember that 
in 1773 Canada was ceded by France to 
the British Crown. In 1774 the Quebec 
Act guaranteed the Canadians their re- 
ligious privileges. This concession called 
forth the wrath of the bigots, and the ad- 
dress written by John Jay spoke harshly of 
the Canadians and their faith. In 1776 
the Congress, seeing that the struggle was 
to be one of life or death, strove to enlist 
the Canadians in the American cause. 
Three Commissioners were appointed to 
proceed to Canada — Benjamin Franklin, 
Samuel Chase and Charles Carroll of Car- 
rollton. Congress invited Father John 
Carroll, the Jesuit, to join them. When 
they arrived in Canada they found that 
bigotry had blocked their way. The Eng- 
lish government had taken Jay's address, 
translated it into French, and spread it 
broadcast. This, they said, represents the 

294 



Failed Because of Bigoted Protest. 



true spirit of the Colonies — if you join 
them they will turn on you and extirpate 
your religion as they did in Maryland. 
The circular did its work. The Canadians 
were suspicious of the Commissioners. 
The intolerance of John Jay destroyed all 
hope in Canada of a union with the Colo- 
nies. That the Dominion is not to-day an 
integral part of the United States is due 
to the narrowness and intolerance of those 
who, in the supreme hour of a nation's 
struggle, could not refrain from the watch- 
words of bigotry. 

Still the spirit of liberty was so strong 
among the Canadians that, though their 
leaders stood suspiciously aloof, individuals 
flocked to the American army. Two regi- 
ments, known as Congress Own, were 
made up of the French Canadian volun- 
teers. They had a Catholic chaplain, duly 
commissioned by Congress. The Catholic 
Indians from Maine, the Catholic Penob- 
scots, all converts of French or Canadian 
priests, joined the cause of the Colonies. 
All the Catholic clergy in the boundaries 

295 



Charles Carroll on Toleration. 

of the thirteen original States were on the 
side of liberty. In 1778 England at- 
tempted to form a Catholic regiment, and 
appointed Father Farmer of Philadelphia 
chaplain. The Catholics were not forth- 
coming, the priest refused to lend the in- 
fluence of his name and office, and the 
Catholic regiment never materialized. 

Indeed, the Catholics looked to the 
great national struggle as their only hope 
for toleration. Charles Carroll of Car- 
rollton, who, by his signature to the Dec- 
laration of Independence, pledged his for- 
tune to the cause, wrote at the end of his 
long life concerning the motives which 
then animated him: 

When I signed the Declaration of 
Independence I had in view not only 
our independence of England, but the 
toleration of all sects professing the 
Christian religion, and communicat- 
ing to them all equal rights. Happily 
this wise and salutary measure has 
taken place for eradicating religious 
feuds and persecution, and become a 
useful lesson to all governments. Re- 

296 



Religious Liberty in Constitution. 

fleeting, as you must, on the disabili- 
ties, I may truly say on the proscrip- 
tion, of the Roman Catholics in Mary- 
land, you will not be surprised that I 
had much at heart this grand design 
founded on mutual charity, the basis 
of our holy religion. 

When the time came to establish the 
Constitution under which we now live, 
John Carroll was awake to the necessity 
of securing to Catholics their rights under 
the Federal Government. He drew up a 
memorial to Congress on the subject, and 
Washington used his influence to further 
the plan. The differences in religion be- 
tween the various States, and their mutual 
jealousies, contributed not a little to se- 
cure the clause which provides that "no 
religious test shall ever be required as a 
qualification for any office or public trust 
under the United States," as well as the 
First x\mendment, to the effect that "Con- 
gress shall make no law respecting an es- 
tablishment of religion or prohibiting the 
free exercise thereof." 

297 



Spread of Toleration in States. 

When the Constitution was submitted to 
the States the absence of a test was com- 
mented on in several quarters; but the 
growing spirit of liberality overruled these 
objections. Little by little the various 
States erased intolerant provisions from 
their own Constitutions. ^ In New York a 
test oath excluded Catholics from office 
up to 1806. In Connecticut and Massa- 
chusetts, Protestantism was the established 
religion, and taxes were levied for its 
support in Connecticut up to 18 16, and in 
Massachusetts up to 1836. In North Car- 
olina only those who were willing to swear 
to the truth of Protestantism could hold 
office until 1836; a similar provision ob- 
tained in New Jersey until 1844, and it 
is but twenty years since New Hampshire 
was sufficiently penetrated with the Amer- 
ican spirit to allow Catholics to aspire to 
public office. 

Speaking generally, however, the Rev- 
olution left the Church free. She could 
now gather her children into congregations 
and speak to them without fear. . True, 

298 



Catholic Address to Washington. 

they were few and scattered. Bishop Car- 
roll put their number at 25,000. The total 
population was about 3,000,000. But few 
as they were, they had great hopes. The 
Church once more was at liberty to fulfill 
her mission to teach the peoples. The win- 
ter was past, the rain was over and gone; 
the flowers appeared on the earth, the time 
of pruning was come, and the voice of the 
turtle was heard in the land. When Wash- 
ington was elected President, the Catho- 
lics presented him with an address in 
which they said: 

This prospect of national prosper- 
ity is peculiarly pleasing to us on 
another account, because, whilst our 
country preserves her freedom and in- 
dependence, we shall have a well- 
founded title to claim from her jus- 
tice, the equal rights of citizenship, 
as the price of our blood spilt under 
your eyes, and of our common exer- 
tions for her defense, under your 
auspicious conduct — rights rendered 
more dear to us by the remembrance 
of former hardships. When we pray 

299 



Washington's Acknowledgment of Address. 

for the preservation of them, where 
they have been granted — and expect 
the full extension of them from the 
justice of those States v^hich still 
restrict them — when we solicit the 
protection of heaven over our com- 
mon country, we neither omit, nor can 
omit, recommending your preserva- 
tion to the singular care of Divine 
Providence. 

To this Washington replied: 

As mankind becomes more liberal, 
they will be more apt to allow that all 
those who conduct themselves as 
worthy members of the community 
are equally entitled to the protection 
of the civil government. I hope ever 
to see America among the foremost 
nations in examples of justice and lib- 
erality. And I presume that your 
fellow citizens will not forget the 
patriotic part which you took in the 
accomplishment of their Revolution 
and the establishment of your gov- 
ernment; or the important assistance 
which they received from a nation in 
which the Roman Catholic faith is 
orofessed. 

300 



The Increase of Catholic Immigration. 

During the closing years of the 
eighteenth century and the first thirty 
years of the nineteenth century, we hear 
very little about the Ghosts. The nation 
was too busy. She had extended her out- 
posts to the Mississippi. Within a period 
of nine years, from 1812 to 1821, seven 
States had been admitted to the Union. 

Up to 1820 there was practically no 
influx from over the water, but the dis- 
tress which followed the close of the Na- 
poleonic wars sent thousands to America 
to seek new homes. Among the new- 
comers Catholics were numerous. Cath- 
olic churches and convents sprang up in 
places where Catholics, within the mem- 
ory of many, had been under severe dis- 
abilities. The vast majority of those Cath- 
olics were Irish, and the prejudice against 
their faith was strengthened by the preju- 
dice against their race. Said the Bishop 
of Charleston: 

England has, unfortunately, too 
well succeeded in linking contumely 
to the Irish name in all her colonies; 

301 



Irish Catholics Slandered by English. 

and though the United States have 
cast away the yoke under which she 
held them, many other causes have 
combined to continue against the 
Irish Catholics, more or less, to the 
present day the sneer of the super- 
cilious, the contempt of the conceited, 
and the dull prosing of those who 
imagine themselves wise. That 
which more than a century of fashion 
has made habitual is not to be over- 
come in a year; and to any Irish 
Catholic who has dwelt in this coun- 
try during one-fourth of the period 
of my sojourn it will be painfully 
evident that, although the evil is 
slowly diminishing its influence is not 
confined to the American or to the 
anti-Catholic. When a race is once 
degraded, no matter how unjustly, 
it is a weakness of our nature that, 
however we mav be identified with 
them upon some points, we are desir- 
ous of showing that the similitude is 
not complete. You may be an Irish- 
man, but not a Catholic; you may be 
a Catholic, but not Irish. It is clear 
you are not an Irish Catholic in 
either case. But when the great ma- 

302 



The Orangemen Take Up No Popery Cry. 

jority of Catholics in the United 
States were either Irish or of Irish 
descent, the force of the prejudice 
against the Irish Catholic bore 
against the Catholic religion, and the 
influence of this prejudice has been 
far more mischievous than is gener- 
ally believed. — Bishop England's 
Works, vol. in, p. S^3' 

The increase in immigration between 
1820 and 1830 naturally stirred up the 
anti-foreign feeling which appears to be 
common to all races of men. This feeling 
took an anti-Catholic direction through 
the circumstances of the times. Catholic 
emancipation, which was conceded by the 
British Parliament in 1829, had been pre- 
ceded by a long and bitter controversy. 
All the opponents of toleration had re- 
vived the old Ghosts to frighten the Brit- 
ish public, and Catholics were painted in 
the blackest colors. All this controversy 
found an echo in America. The Orange- 
men who had been formed to maintain the 
Protestant ascendancy, in immigrating 
here brought their lodges with them. The 

303 



Mobs in Boston and New York. 

toleration which had marked so many of 
the Protestant preachers at the Revolution 
gave way to an insane dread of Popery. 
Catholics, and Irish Catholics at that, 
were spreading their religion everywhere^ 
and did not show the slightest desire to 
accept Martin Luther and the blessed 
Reformation. 

As early as 1829 the houses of Catholics 
on Broad street, Boston, had been attacked 
by a mob; but beyond breaking a few win- 
dows no damage was done. In 1831 St. 
Mary's Church, in Sheriff street, New 
York, was attacked and burned by incen- 
diaries. In the same year the Orangemen 
had taken the name of the American Prot- 
estant Association and were actively en- 
gaged In publishing and propagating all 
manner of calumnies against the Church. 
They found a receptive soil. The most 
extraordinary and improbable tales were 
believed, and the days of Titus Oates 
appeared to have come again. 

As New England had been the most 
Protestant of all the Colonies, the agitation 

304 



Burning of Charleston Convent. 

came to a head there soonest. An Ursu- 
line Convent had been established at 
Charlestown, and the Sisters soon had a 
flourishing school. Their success excited 
the ire of the Rev. Lyman Beecher, a Con- 
gregationalist clergyman, and many and 
bitter were the sermons he preached 
against the Church. The vilest accusations 
were made against the Sisters — and be- 
lieved. In 1834 ^^^ ^^ ^^^ inmates, in a 
fit of delirium brought on by overstudy, 
left the institution and went to a neigh- 
bor's house. A medical examination 
showed that she was deranged, but after 
some time she was induced to return to the 
convent. Immediately rumors were spread 
that she was detained in the institution 
against her will. The preachers delivered 
inflammatory sermons — Beecher preached 
as many as three sermons on one Sunday 
on the iniquities of the Catholics and 
convents. Meetings were held, and a 
brave mob set forth in the darkness of the 
night to attack a few defenseless women 
and children. The doors were brjken in, 

30s 



Puritans Protect the Marauders. 

and the Sisters and their pupils driven 
forth from their home. Barrels of liquor 
were brought to excite the piety and pa- 
triotism of the mob. They ransacked the 
house, smashed the furniture, made a great 
heap of everything combustible in the 
rooms, set fire to it, and with shouts of 
exultation cast into the blaze, as a peace 
offering to the devil they worshipped, a 
Catholic Bible. They did not desist from 
their work until the convent was burned 
to the ground, and then they turned to the 
graves of the dead, wrested the plates from 
the coffins, and left the mouldering 
remains of their tenants exposed to view. 
The perpetrators of the outrage were 
known, and a prosecution was begun 
against them, but the State let the matter 
go by default. No witnesses were called, 
and the scoundrels were declared not 
guilty. The Massachusetts Legislature re- 
fused to give compensation to those who 
had trusted to the State for protection, and 
for many a long day the blackened walls 
of the Charlestown Convent stood as a 

306 



The Imposture of Maria Monk. 

monument to the malice of bigotry, to the 
intolerance of the preachers, to the power 
of the Ghosts and to the cowardice and 
hypocrisy of the Puritan politicians who 
looked on with folded arms while the dam- 
age was doing, who bewailed it with croc- 
odile tears when it was accomplished, and 
who, afraid of their enlightened constit- 
uents, refused to vote that compensation to 
which by the laws of God and man the 
injured were entitled. 

Two years afterwards there appeared 
in New York one of the most successful 
impostures ever planned. A common 
woman named Maria Monk, and a disso- 
lute preacher, the Rev. J. J. Slocum, con- 
cocted a book entitled "Awful Disclosures 
of Maria Monk." She had been sent by 
her mother to the Magdalen Asylum in 
Montreal, but she had escaped therefrom 
and returned to her life of shame. The 
book purported to be an account of the 
life of the Sisters in the famous hospital 
in Montreal known as the Hotel Dieu, 
and charged the nuns with immorality, 

307 



Denounced by Committee of Protestants. 

harshness, cruelty and murder. The book 
was published by the Harpers in 1836, and 
had an immense sale. The preachers had 
been continuously pitching into Popery for 
six years and more, and this was a godsend. 
It was read more widely, perhaps, than 
any book ever before published in Amer- 
ica, and thousands took it as Gospel. A 
committee of Protestants went to Montreal, 
book in hand, and examined the Hotel 
Dieu, and the description of that building 
given by Maria Monk showed she had 
never seen it. William L. Stone, editor of 
the Commercial Advertiser, and a man 
strongly prejudiced against Catholics, also 
visited Montreal, explored the Hotel Dieu 
from garret to cellar, and published his 
opinion on the book. 

The result is the most thorough 
conviction that Maria Monk is an 
arrant impostor — that she nevei was 
a nun, and never was within the walls 
of the Hotel Dieu — and consequently 
that her disclosures are wholly and 
unequivocally, from beginning to end, 
untrue — either the vagaries of a dis- 

308 



But Believed Implicitly by Rank and File. 

tempered brain, or a series of calum- 
nies, unequalled in the depravity of 
their invention and unsurpassed in 
their enormitv. There are those, I 
am well aware, who will not adopt 
this conclusion, though one should 
arise from the dead and attest it — 
even though Noah, Daniel and Job 
were to speak from the slumber of 
ages and confirm it. 

Maria Monk's book was thoroughly re- 
futed, but the fanatics clung to it still. 
Maria Monk's mother made solemn oath 
that the abandoned preacher, her daugh- 
ter's paramour, had attempted to bribe her 
to support the imposture; but what was 
her oath against a spicy story about priests 
and nuns? The conspirators themselves 
quarreled over the spoils, and more than 
one of them admitted the falsehood of the 
whole book. It was shown that the awful 
disclosures were copied, word for word, 
from an anti-Popery tract published in 
1 78 1, entitled "The Gates of Hell Opened, 
or a Development of the Secrets of Nun- 
neries," but still the disclosures were de- 

309 



The Period of the Microbe of Bigotry, 

voured. Even to this day Maria Monk's 
book is sold on your bookstalls, and was 
recommended during the A. P. A. agita- 
tion as suitable reading for devout and 
patriotic Protestants. Such is the vitality 
of a lie, such the credulity of intolerance. 

The microbe of bigotry has a period, 
like the microbe of yellow fever or chol- 
era. From 1830 to the Civil War, every 
ten years saw an outbreak of fanaticism. 
In 1834 w^ ^^^ *h^ burning of the 
Charlestown convent; in 1844 we had the 
native American riots; in 1854 we had 
the Know-Nothing riots. As yet, we have 
considered only the ancient Ghosts, which 
flourished in England, and which were 
imported here. In the forties we meet 
with a new Ghost, which had its origin 
on this continent, and which is in very 
truth Our Own Ghost. 

The school system of this country is not 
the work of one man, of one time or of one 
State. It is a gradual growth, and dififers 
in character and efiiciency from State to 
State, from county to county, and from 

310 



The Rise of the Public School System. 

town to town. Originally, as started in 
Massachusetts, it was what we call now a 
parochial school system. Religion was in- 
culcated, and as the colony of Massachu- 
setts was Protestant that religion was 
Protestantism. In a community where all 
think alike in matters of faith a public 
school system may very well be a religious 
system; but in a community where there 
are various religions it is manifestly not 
fair to tax the adherents of one creed in 
order that another creed may be taught 
their children. It is certainly not right 
to make Catholics pay for the teaching 
of Protestantism,, and it would be a mon- 
strous thing to take the children of 
Protestant parents and raise them Cath- 
olics. 

Before the great immigration began 
this country was overwhelmingly Protes- 
tant. The school system, such as it was, 
was dominated by Protestantism. When 
the children of the Catholic immigrants 
began to frequent the schools they were 
compelled to read the Protestant Bible 

3" 



Originally Protestant Schools. 

and to read Protestant prayers. Such a 
violation of the rights of conscience was 
not to be endured without a protest. The 
Catholic parents protested, but their pro- 
tests were in vain. As late as 1859, ^^ 
Eliot School, Boston, a Catholic boy was 
ordered to repeat the Ten Commandments 
in the Protestant form. He refused, and 
was flogged by the teacher on both hands 
for thirty minutes, the brute declaring 
that he would whip the child until he con- 
sented. A suit for assault and battery fol- 
lowed, but the judge held that the teacher 
was within his rights in attempting to 
hammer Popery out of the poor little boy. 
The schools of Philadelphia were mod- 
eled on the same plan as the schools of 
Massachusetts. The Protestant Bible was 
read to the children, and naturally the 
Catholic parents complained of this as an 
abridgment of the rights of conscience. 
In 1844, Bishop Kenrick petitioned the 
School Board to allow the Catholic chil- 
dren to use the Catholic Bible. He did 
not ask that the Protestant Bible be ex- 

312 



Anti-Catholic Riots in Philadelphia. 

eluded; he simply asked that the Cath- 
olics be permitted to adopt the version 
which their Church sanctioned. 

The petition was misrepresented, and 
misrepresented designedly. The cry went 
forth that the Catholics wanted to drive 
the Bible from the schools. The preachers, 
as usual, took up the cry, and the Ghosts of 
the Little Red Schoolhouse and of Rome's 
Red Hand scared the sober Quakers. The 
Orangemen of Philadelphia — all foreign- 
ers — were the backbone of the Native 
American Party. They got up a great 
meeting to denounce the Pope, and they 
also took care to get up a riot. This 
has always been a familiar trick of no- 
Popery mobs. We have had some speci- 
mens of it in this city, and we know the 
dexterity with which they can create a 
disturbance among their own '^plug- 
uglies" and then saddle the blame on the 
Papists. In Philadelphia this trick was 
tried with success. The mob began an 
attack on the houses occupied by Catho- 
lics. Naturally the Catholics defended 

313 



Churches and Convents Burned. 

their property, and some of the rioters 
were justly killed. Next the cry was, ^^To 
the nunnery!" A rush was made for 
the house occupied by the Sisters of Char- 
ity; but a volley from a few defenders 
drove the scoundrelly cowards off. Bishop 
Kenrick then published a card to his peo- 
ple urging his flock to keep the peace. 
This was the worst thing he could have 
done, because it emboldened the rioters, 
who w^ere assured of the connivance of the 
civil authorities and who feared nothing 
but to face men. The next day the rioters 
began again. St. Michael's Church and 
the priest's residence were set on fire; then 
St. Augustine's Church was burned. In 
the afternoon the home of the Sisters, 
who in the days of the cholera had at- 
tended Protestant and Catholic alike, was 
given to the flames. 

All this happened in May, 1844, in 
Philadelphia. A similar campaign had 
been fought out in New York with a dif- 
ferent captain, and a far different ending. 
There was a school law in force in the 

314 



John Hughes and the New York Schools. 

State of New York since the beginning 
of the century, but it had not been ex- 
tended to the city. From 1812 the private 
schools received a portion of the school 
fund, and of course the Catholic schools 
among others. A private society, however, 
known as the Public School Society, had 
been growing up, and had gradually ab- 
sorbed all the school funds. This society 
was a Protestant society, and its text books 
were so grossly offensive that Catholic 
children could not conscientiously attend 
the schools. In 1840 the Catholics peti- 
tioned for a return to the old system. Of 
course, at once the preachers were alert 
to oppose any concession to fair play. 
After an exciting debate before the Com- 
mon Council, in which John Hughes, the 
Bishop of New York, set forth the Cath- 
olic claims, the petition was rejected. The 
Catholics, however, carried the matter be- 
fore the legislature. The Public School 
Society was abolished and the neutral 
State system was extended to the city. 
This was the state of affairs in New York 



Advises Catholics to Defend Their Homes. 

when the riots happened in Philadelphia. 
The Native American Party had elected 
as Mayor one of the Harpers, the pub- 
lishers of Maria Monk's book. It was 
planned to get up a great meeting to wel- 
come delegates from the Philadelphia 
rioters, and then, under the usual pretext, 
start a row and attack the Catholic 
churches. When the Catholics came to 
Bishop Hughes for advice he asked a law- 
yer, ^^Does the law of New York provide 
compensation for damage done by rioters?" 
The lawyer replied that it did not. 
^Then," he said, ^^the law intends that citi- 
zens should defend their own property." 
An issue of the Catholic paper appeared 
immediately, containing a proclamation to 
Catholics: 

If, as it has already appeared in 
Philadelphia, it should be a part of 
Native Americanism to attack the 
houses and churches of Catholics, then 
it behooves Catholics, in case all other 
protection fail, to defend both with 
their lives. In this they will not be 
acting against, but for the law. In 

316 



The Rise of the Know Nothing Party. 



no case let them suffer an outrage on 
their property without repelling the 
aggression at all hazards. 

The warning was sufficient The Na- 
tive Americans knew their man. John 
Hughes would stand no nonsense. The 
meeting was never held. The delegates 
from the Philadelphia thugs never ap- 
peared. There were no riots in New 
York. 

The next agitation against the Church 
began in the fifties. In 1852 a secret, 
oath-bound association was founded, 
which spread over the country like wild- 
fire. When questioned as to its nature, 
its members answered, ^^I don't know," 
hence their popular and appropriate title 
of Know Nothings. It purported to be a 
nativistic movement, but it was in reality 
the old American Protestant Association, 
receiving its impetus from imported pa- 
triots. As usual, its cause was championed 
by the preachers, and by a number of ex- 
priests who had been exiled, because of 
political troubles in Italy, such as Guis- 

317 



Usual Results of Arson and Murder. 

tiniani and Gavazzi, companions of the 
infamous Achilli, whom Newman at this 
time was flaying in Birmingham. A fa- 
natic who called himself the Angel Ga- 
briel added to the turmoil. He began in 
the streets of Boston, holding forth against 
popes, priests, nuns and Catholics gener- 
ally. Arson and murder followed his foot- 
s.teps. In May, 1854, the mob attacked 
the Catholics at Chelsea, and burned a 
church. In June a Catholic church was 
burned at Coburg. In July another was 
blown up with gunpowder at Dorchester, 
on the fourth, and on the fifth the church 
of Bath was destroyed; the priest. Father 
Bapst, was tarred and feathered, and re- 
ceived such injuries that he never recov- 
ered. In the same year the Know Noth- 
ings were successful at the election in 
Massachusetts, and a bill was passed 
through the legislature in 1855 providing 
for the inspection of convents. The legis- 
lative blackguards who went to perform 
the work in one convent behaved so shame- 
fully that public opinion was aroused, and 

318 



Massacre of Catholics in Louisville. 

the act was repealed. In the same year 
desperate rioting occurred in Louisville, 
Kentucky, where the Know Nothings at- 
tempted to prevent Catholics from going 
to the polls. Nearly a hundred Catholics 
were shot down, and over twenty houses 
were burned. Louisville never recovered 
from that Bloody Monday, as it was 
called. The current of immigration 
passed it by and it was left to Know 
Nothingism and stagnation. 

The end of the anti-Catholic agitation 
was at hand. The great struggle between 
the North and South was looming up. 
In 1856 the party was swept out of exist- 
ence in the North. It lingered in the 
South, but greater issues killed it there, 
too. The cry of unpatriotism made 
against the Catholics and the Irish was 
drowned in their answer to Lincoln's call 
for volunteers, and in the tramp of their 
regiments marching to the front. The war 
brought Catholics and Protestants close 
together, as they had been brought close 
together in the days of the Revolution 

319 



The Ghosts Laid for a Time by Civil War. 

and Our Own Ghost was laid in blood. 
It was only when the memory of that con- 
flict was dying out and a new generation 
had grown to manhood that the Ghosts 
again walked abroad. By the time of the 
great Columbus celebrations of 1892 the 
twenty years term of the microbe of bigotry 
had been completed and the clamor of the 
A. P. A. filled the land. The history of 
that movement is too familiar to the Ameri- 
can people to need recounting. Like the 
Know-Nothing Ghost of the fifties it too 
was laid by war. 



320 



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